\  HANDy  GOD  m 
ipRICAN  HISTORY 


A 


/ 


PREFACE. 


IN  the  year  1850  Prof.  Henry  Reed  delivered  two 
lectures  on  "  The  History  of  the  American  Union  " 
before  the  Smithsonian  Institute,  and  published 
them  in  Philadelphia.  In  these  he  tried  to  trace 
the  workings  of  divine  Providence  in  the  welding 
together  of  the  diverse  and  (seemingly)  hopelessly 
divided  materials  of  colonial  America  into  a  federal 
union.  The  reading  of  these  lectures  gave  me  a 
new  point  of  view  for  the  study  of  American  history, 
and  one  which  I  have  found  useful  in  writing  and 
lecturing  on  the  subject.  Out  of  my  lectures  es- 
pecially has  grown  this  book,  whose  inadequacy  I 
deeply  feel,  but  I  have  written  it  with  the  hope  that 
others  will  be  led  by  it  to  cultivate  the  field  more 
fully. 

Philadelphia,  January,  1902. 


CONTENTS. 

iAPTER  PAGE 

I.  PRINCIPLES  AT  STAKE           ...        I 

II.      THE   ARENA J 

III.  THE  FOUNDERS 14 

IV.  FIRST   WELDING  .           .           .           .22 
V.  THE  RENDING  OF  BONDS      ,          .          -39 

VI.  THE  WAR   FOR   INDEPENDENCE  .      $1 

VII.  CHAOS   AND   CONSTRUCTION  .          .      63 

VIII.  EXPANSION   AND   INVENTION  .           .      79 

IX.  THE   HEGEMONY  OF  THE  CONTINENT         92 

X.  THE   IMMIGRANT               .           .  .           .10$ 

XI.  THE  PROPHETS  OF  REFORM  .          .    1 1/ 

XII.  A  WAR  AND   ITS   PENALTIES  .           .130 

XIII.  THE  PERIL    AND    TRIUMPH    OF  THE 

UNION 142 

XIV.  RECONSTRUCTION  AND   GROWTH  .158 
XV.      THE    PERILS     OF    PEACE    AND  PROS- 
PERITY       .           .                     .          .  .I/O 

XVI.      THE  PARTING  OF  THE  WAYS        .  .183 

XVII.      THE  VOCATION  OF  THE  REPUBLIC       .    199 

INDEX 225 


THE   HAND   OF  GOD    IN 
AMERICAN   HISTORY. 


CHAPTER   I. 

PRINCIPLES  AT  STAKE. 

WHY  is  it  that  the  Bible  account  of  a  nation's 
history  is  so  different  from  that  kind  of  history 
which  is  written  about  nations  in  modern  times? 
The  Bible  speaks  of  God  as  having  a  great  deal  to 
do  with  what  was  going  on,  and  of  his  will  as  a 
controlling  force  in  the  movements  of  history. 
The  modern  history  traces  everything  to  secondary 
causes,  mostly  to  the  characters  and  the  wills  of 
leading  people,  to  the  external  circumstances  of 
the  nation's  existence,  to  the  influence  of  great 
movements  of  public  opinion,  or  to  the  influence 
one  country  exercises  upon  another. 

There  are  three  possible  explanations  of  the 
difference : 

a.  "  The  writers  of  the  Bible  did  not  know  any 
better  than  to  bring  God  into  the  story,  as  it  was 
their  way  of  accounting  for  everything  that  hap- 


2  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

pened.  We  in  modern  times  have  learned  to  look 
on  these  matters  in  a  more  scientific  way,  and  to 
discern  the  sufficiency  of  secondary  and  human 
means  to  account  for  everything." 

This  way  of  explaining  the  difference  seems  to 
be  in  the  minds  of  many  who  suppose  themselves 
believers  in  the  Bible,  but  think  its  statements  are 
to  be  taken  with  a  grain  of  salt,  or  with  large  allow- 
ances for  "  oriental  modes  of  speech,"  when  they 
come  upon  anything  that  seems  to  imply  that  God 
is  actively  and  personally  concerned  with  the  affairs 
of  men.  They  are  quite  willing  to  allow  Him  large 
scope  for  action  in  his  dealing  with  the  spiritual 
interests  of  individual  men,  because  they  do  not 
see  how  else  to  account  for  men's  salvation.  But 
when  it  comes  to  the  affairs  of  nations  and  govern- 
ments, they  adopt  the  attitude  of  the  unbeliever, 
and  reconcile  their  half-beliefs  with  the  Bible,"  by 
"  explaining  away  "what  it  says. 

There  is  no  reason  for  making  any  such  distinc- 
tion as  this  between  the  two  spheres  of  the  divine 
activity.  Just  as  a  Tyndall  has  to  admit  that  all 
the  explanations  science  can  offer  of  the  ways  of 
working  in  the  kingdoms  of  nature,  still  leave  us 
face  to  face  with  the  great  mystery  of  the  world's 
origination,  so  all  that  we  have  learned  of  the 
workings  of  secondary  causes  in  the  field  of  political 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  3 

society,  leaves  us  still  face  to  face  with  the  mystery 
of  its  origination.  In  both  cases  we  are  shut  up  to 
the  view  that  behind  the  visible  and  concrete  fact, 
there  is  a  great  and  benevolent  Intelligence  at  work ; 
and  it  is  nothing  less  than  absurd  to  suppose  that 
He  who  brought  this  order  of  things  into  being,  has 
ceased  to  interest  Himself  actively  in  its  operations. 

b.  A  second  theory  is  that  "  God  did  actively 
interest  Himself  in  the  social  affairs  of  a  single 
people  for  good  reasons,  since  it  was  through  that 
people  He  meant  to  achieve  the  great  good  of  es- 
tablishing his  Church  in  the  earth,  but  that  other 
nations  are  upon  a  very  different  footing.  That 
was  an  '  elect  people,'  which  had  a  great  service  to 
render  to  mankind,  and  its  fate  and  fortunes  very 
rightly  occupied  the  attention  of  the  Almighty 
until  its  destiny  was  accomplished.  Other  nations 
are  not  '  elect.'  They  are  merely  temporary  and 
secular  arrangements  for  accomplishing  ends  which 
are  limited  to  this  world.  God  has  no  such  great 
purposes  to  work  out  through  them,  and  therefore 
does  not  concern  Himself  about  them  as  He  did 
about  the  Jews." 

This  view  of  the  matter  has  the  misfortune  to  be 
quite  irreconcilable  with  what  the  Bible  itself  says 
on  the  subject.  While  it  does  represent  the  Jewish 
people  as  "  elect  "  for  a  great  providential  purpose, 


4  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

it  also  represents  other  nations  as  enjoying  God's 
active  attention  in  a  very  eminent  degree.  The 
Jewish  prophets  have  their  messages  to  every  coun- 
try among  their  neighbors,  and  in  one  case  a  prophet 
is  sent  on  a  long  mission  to  one  of  those  countries, 
although  at  that  time  it  had  nothing  to  do  with  the 
affairs  of  the  Jewish  people.  The  calling  and  elec- 
tion of  the  Jewish  people  are  said  to  be  expressly  for 
the  sake  of  all  the  rest.  When  at  last  the  position 
of  an  "  elect  people  "  is  to  be  taken  away  from  the 
Jews,  it  is  said  distinctly  it  is  to  be  given  to  "a 
Nation  bringing  forth  the  fruits  thereof." 

The  notion  that  national  life  is  out  of  direct  rela- 
tion with  the  rule  of  God  in  the  world,  is  one  which 
churchmen  in  all  ages  and  of  all  schools  have  too 
much  favored,  as  a  means  of  exalting  the  Church  at 
the  expense  of  everything  else.  But  it  is  a  notion 
which  finds  no  support  in  the  Bible,  and  none  in 
the  nature  of  things.  The  Nation  is  no  more  super- 
seded as  a  divine  institution  by  the  rise  of  the 
Church,  than  is  the  Family  thus  superseded  by  the 
rise  of  both. 

c.  A  third  view,  and  one  more  in  harmony  with 
both  the  Bible  and  the  instincts  of  mankind,  is  that 
there  is  no  real  difference  between  the  Bible  history 
and  that  of  modern  times,  but  a  great  difference  in 
the  way  of  viewing  and  interpreting  that  history. 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  5 

The  Bible  history  was  written  by  men  who  had  the 
power  to  see  below  the  surface  of  things,  and  who 
interpreted  their  meaning  as  the  working  out  of  the 
divine  law  and  will  in  human  affairs.  As  God  is 
unchanging  in  his  wisdom  and  goodness,  He  deals 
with  modern  nations  in  substantially  the  same  way 
as  He  did  with  the  Jews.  He  is  not  far  off  from 
them,  nor  are  his  hands  tied  by  the  existence  of 
"  general  laws,"  so  that  He  cannot  act.  He  works 
indeed  through  secondary  causes,  and  not  by  mir- 
acle, in  any  ordinary  case.  But  secondary  causes 
are  his  agents,  and  not  forces  independent  of  Him. 
If  we  had  the  eye  to  see  it,  we  would  find  that  the 
course  of  our  national  history  is  much  more  like 
what  the  Bible  tells  us  that  of  the  Jews  was,  than 
we  could  have  imagined. 

Take,  for  instance,  the  history  of  the  American 
War  for  Independence.  It  is  possible  to  tell  the 
story  of  that  war  as  a  matter  of  the  operation  of 
secondary  and  human  causes  from  beginning  to  end. 
If  there  was  a  man  among  the  patriots  of  that  time 
who  was  likely  to  take  that  view  of  it,  it  was  Ben- 
jamin Franklin.  He  had  grown  up  in  the  Deistic 
belief  that  secondary  causes  and  general  laws  are 
sufficient  to  account  for  everything  that  happens, 
and  that  God  plays  no  part  in  human  history  except 
as  the  author  of  those  general  laws.  He  had  been 


6  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

confirmed  in  this  way  of  regarding  the  process  of 
affairs  through  his  scientific  studies,  which  accus- 
tom a  man  to  seeing  intently  and  distinctly  the 
facts  which  lie  near  his  eyes,  and  disuse  him  from 
looking  farther.  As  our  envoy  to  France  he  was 
well  placed  for  studying  the  course  of  events  in  a 
calm  and  philosophic  spirit,  and  in  a  human  environ- 
ment not  of  the  devout  kind.  Yet  Franklin  declared 
that  what  he  had  seen  in  that  war  had  satisfied  him 
of  the  active  participation  of  God  in  human  history, 
and  had  shattered  his  Deism  to  pieces.  And  that 
he  was  not  an  isolated  observer  of  this  is  shown  by 
the  action  of  the  legislature  of  Pennsylvania,  which 
abolished  slavery  in  that  commonwealth  as  an  act 
of  thanksgiving  to  God  for  the  successful  outcome 
of  the  war. 

It  is  not  close  contact  with  great  events  which 
weakens  men's  convictions  of  the  nearness  and 
activity  of  God.  This  has  been  shown  by  the  testi- 
mony of  many  of  the  great  men  of  history,  and  of 
this  testimony  some  will  be  quoted  in  the  following 
pages.  Those  of  them  who,  like  Franklin,  saw  this 
in  our  own  history,  will  be  our  willing  witnesses  to 
the  truth  that  God's  hand  has  shaped  the  course  of 
our  national  history  for  his  own  great  ends. 

"  The  more  a  man  is  versed  in  business,"  said 
Lord  Chatham,  "  the  more  he  finds  the  hand  of 
Providence  everywhere." 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY. 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE  ARENA. 

KARL  RITTER,  in  his  great  work  on  Comparative 
Geography,  points  out  that  the  earth's  surface  is 
divided  naturally  into  areas,  which  are  specially 
adapted  to  serve  as  the  home  of  national  societies. 
The  direction  of  the  mountain  ranges  and  the 
sweep  of  the  great  rivers,  as  well  as  the  bounds 
which  separate  ocean  and  land,  are  the  natural 
boundaries  which  sever  people  from  people,  and 
constitute  the  arenas  within  which  nations  live  their 
life  and  achieve  their  destiny.  Without  these 
separations,  there  could  have  been  no  strong  devel- 
opment of  the  national  peculiarities  which  are  the 
contribution  each  country  makes  to  the  general 
advancement  of  mankind. 

In  Europe  and  Asia  the  areas  thus  constituted 
are  generally  small,  and  confined  to  a  single  climate. 
The  great  mountain  ranges  run  east  and  west,  and 
carry  the  migrations  of  the  peoples  along  the  same 
parallels,  so  as  to  stamp  upon  them  the  characters 
of  a  single  dominant  temperature.  In  the  New 


8  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

World  the  mountain  ranges  run  along  the  meridians, 
not  the  parallels.  They  unite  and  mingle  peoples 
of  different  climates,  and  hint  at  the  development 
of  a  national  life  of  far  greater  richness  and  variety 
than  the  Old  World  has  seen. 

This  is  especially  true  of  the  area  occupied  by 
the  American  Nation,  which  runs  from  north  to 
south  about  twelve  hundred  miles,  from  latitude 
24°  30'  north  to  49°  24'  north.  Lying  entirely 
within  that  North  Temperate  zone  which  has  been 
the  field  of  all  the  great  developments  in  human  his- 
tory, it  embraces  all  the  variations  of  climate  which 
belong  to  that  zone,  except  the  most  northern.  Its 
area  (exclusive  of  Alaska  and  other  dependencies 
outlying)  is  slightly  less  than  three  million  square 
miles.  This  is  larger  than  the  area  of  the  Roman 
Empire  in  the  days  of  its  greatness,  and  is  by  far 
the  greatest  share  of  the  earth's  surface  that  has 
ever  been  brought  under  the  active  rule  of  a  free 
national  government.  Russia  embraces  more  land 
within  her  military  empire  ;  Great  Britain  has  in  her 
national  domain,  her  colonies  and  her  dependencies, 
an  area  about  as  large  as  that  of  Russia;  but  in  each 
case  the  properly  national  territory,  occupied  by  a 
homogeneous  population,  is  far  below  our  own.  In 
each  case  the  greater  part  both  of  the  area  and  the 
population  controlled  by  the  imperial  government 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  9 

consists  of  conquered  territory  and  of  its  residents, 
who  neither  are  nor  can  be  admitted  to  equality  of 
rights  with  the  nation  proper. 

The  natural  resources  of  our  three  millions  of 
square  miles  are  such  as  to  constitute  this  the  most 
valuable  division  of  the  earth's  surface  possessed  by 
any  people.  While  all  parts  of  it  are  not  of  equal 
value,  it  contains  more  land  capable  of  human  cul- 
tivation, more  navigable  waters  in  its  lakes  and 
rivers,  more  extensive  mineral  deposits,  and  larger 
pastures,  than  does  any  other  national  area. 

Yet  it  was  despised  and  neglected  by  the  first 
settlers  and  conquerors  of  the  New  World,  as  not 
worth  the  taking.  Only  one  Spaniard  of  that 
earliest  time  trusted  himself  within  its  interior,  and 
he  in  search  of  the  fabled  fountain  of  perpetual 
youth.  The  Spaniard  and  the  Portuguese  sought 
gold  and  silver  as  the  most  satisfactory  rewards  of 
conquest.  They  pressed  westward  to  the  mountain 
regions,  where  the  strata  containing  the  precious 
metals  had  lifted  these  up  within  the  reach  of  man ; 
and  they  used  up  the  native  population  in  forced 
labor  in  the  mines,  until  it  was  but  a  seventh  of 
what  they  had  found  it.  Yet  the  entire  product  of 
the  mines  of  Potosi  would  not  buy  the  annual  crop 
of  hay  or  corn  in  our  country,  or  pay  for  the  yearly 
output  of  our  iron  furnaces  and  mills.  For  natural 


io  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

products  owe  their  value  to  the  industry  and  capac- 
ity of  the  people  into  whose  hands  they  fall,  and 
the  best  of  them  are  accessible  only  to  the  industrial 
power  which  comes  of  numbers,  intelligence  and 
united  toil. 

To  those  who  wanted  to  become  rich  by  a  hur- 
ried process  and  without  personal  labor,  a  more  at- 
tractive field  was  to  be  found  in  the  parts  of  the 
continent  which  lay  nearer  to  the  equator,  and  they 
passed  by  the  region  which  now  exceeds  all  the  rest 
of  the  continent  in  the  numbers  of  its  population, 
its  accumulations  of  wealth,  its  diffusion  of  intelli- 
gence, and  its  high  standard  of  living.  Providence 
seems  to  have  kept  the  most  valuable  thing  in  the 
New  World  from  notice,  until  the  fit  people  was 
ready  to  occupy  it. 

Similarly,  He  seems  to  have  kept  the  whole  con- 
tinent from  discovery  until  Europe  had  reached  the 
point  of  social  development  at  which  its  people 
were  competent  to  become  successful  emigrants. 
Whatever  we  may  think  of  the  claims  of  others  to 
have  been  the  finders  of  America  before  Columbus, 
there  is  no  room  to  doubt  that  the  Northmen 
reached  the  coast  of  what  is  now  Massachusetts  as 
early  as  the  ninth  century.  But  while  they  found 
the  country,  they  did  not  discover  it — did  not  lay  it 
bare  to  the  wondering  eyes  of  the  Old  World,  as 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  11 

Columbus  did  on  his  return  to  Spain  in  1493.  In 
this  there  was  a  wisdom  from  the  heart  of  things, 
for  Europe  was  still  in  the  state  of  land-communism, 
and  had  not  yet  developed  that  individuality  of 
energy  which  was  needed  to  fit  it  for  the  industrial 
conquest  of  the  western  world.  If  settlement  had 
been  begun  and  carried  forward  under  the  con- 
ditions which  then  existed,  the  best  result  would 
have  been  a  number  of  communistic  groups  along 
the  Atlantic  coast,  feebly  holding  their  own  against 
the  aborigines. 

The  aboriginal  population  of  America  came 
hither  from  Asia,  Mr.  Payne  thinks,  during  the 
later  periods  of  the  Ice  Age,  when  the  ice  heaped 
on  all  the  continent  east  of  the  Rocky  Mountains 
lay  so  deep  as  to  deduct  greatly  from  the  depth  of 
the  oceans.  Under  those  conditions,  the  American 
and  the  Asiatic  continents  would  be  connected  by 
a  great  breadth  of  land,  occupying  what  is  now  the 
upper  Pacific,  Behring  Sea,  and  the  adjacent  parts 
of  the  Arctic  Ocean.  On  this  area  an  Asiatic  people 
would  naturally  settle,  to  be  driven  either  back  to 
Asia  or  onward  to  the  coast  of  America,  by  the 
advance  of  the  ocean  as  the  ice  thawed.  This  im- 
migration, he  thinks,  took  place  when  language  was 
still  in  a  very  elementary  stage,  and  number  was  but 
coming  into  recognition.  Unlike  their  kinsmen  of 


12  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

Asia,  the  Americans  developed  a  numerical  system, 
based,  not  on  the  fact  that  man  has  ten  fingers,  but 
that  he  has  twenty  fingers  and  toes.  Pressed  by  the 
necessity  of  finding  food,  the  aborigines  crossed  the 
Rocky  mountains  into  the  regions  the  ice  had  melted 
from,  but  in  still  greater  numbers  to  the  southern 
and  warmer  parts  of  the  continent,  where  they 
developed  a  much  higher  degree  of  material  civiliz- 
ation, and  attained  a  considerable  amount  of 
astronomical  knowledge  for  the  construction  of  the 
cultivator's  calendar.* 

This  southward  trend  of  the  early  migrations 
left  what  is  now  the  Republic  of  America  compara- 
tively unoccupied,  and  awaiting  European  settle- 
ment. All  the  early  observers  agree  on  this  point, 
French  as  well  as  English.  The  Jesuit  fathers, 
who  had  the  best  means  of  judging,  estimated  the 
native  population  in  the  Mississippi  valley  and  the 
regions  eastward  to  the  Atlantic  coast,  at  about 
250,000,  or  less  than  it  is  to-day,  after  all  the 
ravages  of  war,  small-pox  and  "  fire-water  "  on  the 
Indian  population.  And  with  the  natural  resources 
which  now  support  84,000,000  in  comfort,  to  say 
nothing  of  immense  exports  of  food,  this  quarter 


*  History  of  the  New  World  called  America,  by  Edward 
John  Payne,  Vol  II.  (Oxford,  1899.) 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  13 

of  a  million  suffered  from  recurrent  famines  and 
still  more  frequent  hunger.  The  points  at  which 
fish  could  be  had  in  unlimited  quantity — the  lakes 
of  central  New  York,  the  Des  Moines  district  on  the 
Mississippi,  and  the  valley  of  the  Columbia  river — 
were  the  only  places  which  sustained  a  considerable 
population. 

The  condition  of  these  northern  aborigines  must 
have  been  still  worse  before  the  trading  Carib 
Indians  brought  them  the  maize  plant,  'which  had 
been  evolved  by  human  selection  from  a  species  of 
wild  grass  in  southern  Mexico  or  Yucatan,  and  on 
the  banks  of  the  La  Plata  simultaneously.  Even 
with  this  aid  to  fight  famine,  the  native  population 
never  reached  a  figure  at  which  they  could  be  said 
to  possess  the  country,  so  that  Europeans  needed  to 
dispossess  them  in  settling  it. 

Such  was  the  condition  of  our  country  when  the 
first  white  settlers  tried  to  effect  a  footing  on  the 
coast  of  North  America.  It  was  the  fisheries  on 
that  coast  which  furnished  a  preliminary  step  before 
actual  settlement. 


14  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE  FOUNDERS. 

THE  eagle  stirs  up  its  nest  when  the  time  has 
come  for  the  eaglets  to  trust  their  own  wings  and 
shift  for  themselves.  It  was  from  a  stirred  and 
troubled  Europe  that  the  settlers  of  the  New 
World  escaped  to  find  a  home  beyond  the  Atlan- 
tic. 

The  Reformation  of  the  sixteenth  century  was 
the  breaking  away  of  Teutonic  Christendom  from 
the  tutelage  in  which  it  had  been  held  for  centuries 
by  the  Latin  Church.  Just  as  Greek  Christendom 
had  first  derived  its  knowledge  of  the  Gospel  from 
that  of  Syria,  and  had  declared  its  independence  of 
Syria  in  the  great  Councils,  and  as  Latin  Christen- 
dom had  derived  from  that  of  Greece  and  had 
declared  its  independence  of  that  in  the  great 
quarrel  of  the  Papacy  with  the  Eastern  Empire,  so 
the  Teutonic  nations  had  received  their  Christian- 
ity at  the  hands  of  the  Latin  or  Romance  nations, 
and  in  a  form  rather  Romance  than  suited  to  their 
own  genius.  As  they  grew  mature,  they  also  began 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  15 

to  feel  the  trammels  of  a  type  of  Christianity  unsuited 
to  their  character,  and  if  Luther  had  never  been 
born,  they  would  yet  have  broken  away  from  Rome. 

In  this  case  the  break  was  attended  by  more 
severe  struggles  and  more  violent  collisions  than  in 
either  of  the  other  cases  parallel  to  it.  The  rule  of 
Romance  sovereigns  over  Teutonic  peoples,  the 
strongly  established  power  and  prestige  of  the 
Roman  Papacy,  the  dread  of  the  deeply  implanted 
individualism  of  the  Teutons  running  out  into  mere 
crankishness,  and  the  organized  power  of  resistance 
in  the  monastic  orders,  all  combined  to  make  the 
movement  one  of  tumult,  and  "  garments  rolled  in 
blood  and  burning  as  with  fuel  of  fire." 

Nor  was  the  disturbance  confined  to  the  great 
division  between  Romanist  and  Protestant.  Among 
the  Protestants  there  arose  differences  as  to  the 
extent  to  which  the  departure  from  Romance  tradi- 
tion should  be  carried,  resulting  in  the  formation  of 
Lutheran,  Reformed  and  Anglican  communions, 
each  antagonistic  to  the  others,  and  frequently 
carrying  this  antagonism  to  the  point  of  persecu- 
tion. It  was  a  time  when  men  were  sifted  by  the 
windstorms  of  controversy  and  persecution  as  never 
before,  except  in  the  great  struggle  which  preceded 
the  overthrow  of  paganism  and  the  establishment 
of  Christianity  as  the  religion  of  Europe.  It  evoked 


16  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

a  heroism  like  that  of  the  early  Christian  martyrs, 
and  developed  an  earnestness  of  conviction  which 
shrank  from  no  sacrifice  or  suffering. 

In  the  great  struggle  begun  by  the  Roman  Cath- 
olic  Church  for  the  recovery  of  its  hold  on  the 
Teutonic  countries,  it  was  the  Reformed  Church 
which  bore  the  brunt.  France,  Holland  and  the 
Rhine  valley,  which  looked  to  Geneva  for  their 
ideal  of  a  Christian  community,  were  the  especial 
fields  of  conflict ;  and  the  same  Genevan  ideal  took 
hold  of  the  Scotch  people  and  of  a  large  part  of  the 
English,  with  an  earnestness  very  displeasing  to  the 
representatives  of  the  Anglican  conception  of  the 
right  state  of  a  Church  and  its  relations  with  the 
State.  To  the  Presbyterians  of  the  one  country 
and  the  Puritans  of  the  other,  the  model  commu- 
nity of  the  Christian  world  was  Calvin's  city,  where 
godly  discipline  and  orthodox  teaching  united  to 
train  the  people  in  the  ways  of  the  Gospel.  As- 
sociated with  this  admiration  for  the  ecclesiastical 
character  of  Geneva,  was  a  liking  for  the  ways  of 
free  government  which  were  found  in  Switzerland 
and  in  Reformed  Holland.  This  last  was  all  the 
keener  from  an  antagonism  to  the  alliance  of  Angli- 
canism with  Stuart  kingship,  and  the  assumption 
that  kingship  and  episcopacy  were  natural  allies. 
Thus  the  Reformed  or  Calvinistic  movement  came 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  17 

to  be  identified  with  the  demand  for  free,  popular 
government  in  every  part  of  the  European  world, 
giving  some  force  to  King  James's  saying,  "  No 
bishop,  no  king." 

It  was  out  of  a  Europe  thus  rent  apart  by  dis-  ",' 
putes  over  the  greatest  and  most  exciting  questions, 
that  the  first  settlers  of  our  country  came ;  and  for 
the  most  part  they  came  from  the  communities  and 
the  classes  which  had  passed  through  the  fires. 
Even  the  French  settlements  were  begun  by  the 
Huguenots,  and  it  was  through  these  Protestant 
adventurers  that  the  French  government  was  led 
to  see  the  possibilities  of  a  colonial  empire  beyond 
the  Atlantic.  The  Puritan  influence  so  predomi- 
nated in  the  first  settlement  of  Virginia  that  King 
James  abolished  the  Company  which  had  it  in 
charge,  as  "  the  seminary  to  a  seditious  Parliament," 
and  made  it  a  royal  colony  to  get  rid  of  this  in- 
fluence. The  settlement  of  New  England,  begun 
by  Separatists,  who  rejected  all  national  churches, 
and  owned  no  larger  ecclesiastical  assembly  than 
the  local  congregation,  was  continued  by  the  Eng- 
lish Puritans,  who  sought  the  New  World,  not  for 
liberty  of  conscience,  but  for  the  realization  of  Cal- 
vin's ideal  of  a  godly  community  under  Christian 
discipline.  The  Dutch,  fresh  from  the  great  strug- 
gle with  Spain,  colonized  the  Hudson  and  the  Del-  ,, 


i8  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

aware.  The  persecuted  Roman  Catholics  of  Eng- 
land made  a  home  and  a  refuge  for  themselves  in 
Maryland. 

The  Scotch,  having  as  a  nation  no  rights  in  Eng- 
lish America,  were  surprisingly  slow  to  colonize  the 
New  World  ;  but  their  colony  in  Ulster  began  to 
seek  homes  in  America  as  early  as  the  time  of 
Charles  I.,  and  were  found  in  considerable  numbers 
in  Maryland  in  the  reign  of  Charles  II.  They  came 
to  escape  from  the  intolerance  of  the  English 
bishops  established  over  Ireland,  among  them  the 
author  of  "  The  Liberty  of  Prophesying  !  " 

The  last  great  movement  in  colonizing  centres  in 
Pennsylvania.  Thither  came  the  English  Friends, 
to  prove  to  a  doubting  world  that  the  rule  of  the 
Inward  Light  was  capable  of  better  things  than  the 
orgies  of  the  Anabaptists  of  Miinster,  and  that 
without  the  use  of  carnal  weapons  it  was  possible 
to  establish  and  maintain  an  orderly  and  prosperous 
state.  They  were  followed  by  the  (Reformed) 
"  Palatines,"  who  had  witnessed  the  frightful  des- 
olation of  the  Pfalz  electorate  by  the  French  troops 
acting  under  the  orders  of  Louvois;  by  the  Dutch 
Mennonites,  who  had  won  toleration  and  respect 
through  long  and  patient  endurance  of  proscrip- 
tion ;  by  the  Pietist  Lutherans  of  Frankfurt  and 
Altoona,  who  refused  to  share  in  Spener's  com- 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  19 

promises  with  the  worldly  church  of  his  day ;  by 
the  Dunkers  ("  Brethren "  or  German  Baptists), 
who  had  been  gathered  in  the  Rhine  country  by 
Alexander  Mack,  in  his  effort  to  establish  a  pure 
church,  separate  from  the  world  ;  by  the  Behmenists 
of  the  Hermitage  (on  the  Wissahickon)  and  of 
Ephrata,  who  sought  to  produce  a  community 
based  on  the  theosophic  theories  of  the  Gorlitz 
shoemaker ;  by  New-Mooners,  who  blew  trumpets 
once  a  month ;  by  the  "  Stille  im  Lande,"  who  at- 
tended no  public  assembly,  but  practised  religious 
worship  in  their  families ;  and  by  the  Schwenk- 
felders,  driven  finally  from  Silesia  by  two  centuries 
of  Lutheran  and  Romanist  intolerance,  and  aided 
by  the  Mennonites  of  Holland  in  making  their  way 
to  the  New  World. 

Penn's  travels  in  Germany  had  made  him  familiar 
with  many  of  these  sects,  and  their  inwardness  in 
religion  as  well  as  their  quietness  in  civil  society, 
made  him  and  his  successors  welcome  them  to  his 
new  colony.  Nor  were  they  less  welcome  to  the 
far-seeing  founder  of  Pennsylvania  for  being  in 
many  cases  well  practised  in  those  industrial  arts 
which  he  desired  to  see  established  in  his  new  col- 
ony as  a  necessary  supplement  to  its  agriculture. 

The  Quaker  experiment  in  Pennsylvania  as  regards 
many  of  its  distinguishing  features  was  brought  to 


20  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

an  end  by  its  Scotch-Irish  settlers  from  Ulster,  who 
had  been  disappointed  in  their  hopes  of  religious 
equality  from  the  Revolution  of  1688,  and  who, 
between  1715  and  1750,  poured  across  the  Atlantic 
in  myriads.  One  current  sought  New  England, 
establishing  itself  in  Boston  and  some  of  the  towns 
of  eastern  Massachusetts,  but  mostly  in  Maine,  New 
Hampshire  and  (afterwards)  Vermont.  The  much 
greater  body  turned  to  Pennsylvania,  settling  both 
east  of  the  Appalachian  mountain  chain,  and  within 
its  valleys.  Following  the  trend  of  that  mountain 
region,  they  moved  southward  through  Virginia, 
the  Carolinas,  Kentucky  and  Tennessee,  reaching 
northern  Alabama  and  Georgia.  In  this  larger 
American  Ulster  there  are  at  least  three  descendants 
of  the  old  Ulster  Colony  for  one  left  at  home,  and 
from  it  have  come  the  most  characteristic  represen- 
tatives of  the  stock. 

This  enumeration  of  the  classes  and  kinds  of 
American  settlers  should  remove  the  common 
impression  that  the  Puritans  of  New  England  and 
the  Quakers  of  the  Middle  States  were  the  only 
classes  of  American  colonists  who  had  been  under 
the  harrow  of  persecution  before  they  emigrated  to 
America.  In  every  part  of  America  were  found 
those  who  had  endured  trouble  for  their  loyalty  to 
conviction,  but  who  had  made  a  conscience  of  their 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  21 

liberty  in  refusing  to  bow  before  the  mandates  of 
either  monarchs  or  mobs.  It  was  a  picked  and 
sifted  element  which  God  chose  for  the  hard  labor 
of  creating  a  new  country  out  of  the  wilderness, 
and  establishing  a  more  perfect  order  of  free  gov- 
ernment under  new  skies. 

America  drew  the  eyes  of  all  who  were  suffering 
in  the  Old  World,  not,  as  in  our  day,  from  military 
exactions  and  the  depression  of  poverty,  but  from 
the  demand  that  the  individual  should  submit  to 
the  established  beliefs  and  usages,  whatever  his  con- 
victions as  to  their  truth  and  wisdom.  Out  of  all 
the  classes  that  have  been  enumerated,  and  also 
from  the  persecuted  Salzburgers  in  New  York  and 
Georgia,  and  the  exiled  Huguenots  in  New  York 
and  New  Jersey,  was  built  up  the  structure  of  a  new 
society,  with  every  racial  and  national  characteristic 
of  northern  Europe  entering  into  the  complexity. 

"  I  always,"  wrote  John  Adams,  "  consider  the 
settlement  of  America  with  reverence,  as  the  open- 
ing of  a  grand  scene  and  design  of  Providence  for 
the  illumination  of  the  ignorant  and  the  emancipa- 
tion of  the  slavish  part  of  mankind  all  over  the 
earth." 


22  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 


CHAPTER  IV. 

FIRST  WELDING. 

THE  variety  of  elements  which  were  gathered  into 
the  thirteen  colonies  of  itself  seemed  to  threaten  the 
permanent  disunion  of  the  country.  The  colonial 
Americans  were  sundered  by  differences  of  nation- 
ality, differences  of  religious  belief,  differences  of 
political  theory v  Puritans  in  the  north,  Cavaliers  in 
the  South,  Quakers  in  the  middle  ;  English,  Scotch, 
Scotch-Irish,  Welsh,  Dutch,  Germans,  Swedes  and 
French.  The  difficulty  was  greater  than  such  a 
difference  would  offer  in  modern  times,  for  it  was 
an  age  when  national  distinctions  were  a  source  of 
much  sharper  antagonism  than  in  our  day  of  con- 
stant international  intercourse ;  and  it  also  was  a 
time  when  religious  differences  were  regarded  as  con- 
stituting between  communities  a  barrier  which 
hardly  could  be  got  over. 

To  this  was  added  a  large  contempt  on  the  part 
of  the  earlier  settlers  for  those  who  had  come  later. 
Thus  the  arrival  of  the  Scotch-Irish  settlers  was 
everywhere  unwelcome.  The  selectmen  of  Boston 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  23 

ordered  them  to  leave  the  town.  The  solid  citizens 
of  Worcester  turned  out  and  tore  down  the  Presby- 
terian church  they  were  building.  The  Quakers  of 
Pennsylvania  regarded  with  natural  distrust  a  class 
which  looked  into  the  Book  of  Joshua  for  an  Indian 
policy,  and  which  finally  deposed  themselves  from 
the  control  of  the  commonwealth  founded  by 
William  Penn.  There  was  a  similar  indisposition 
to  accept  as  American  colonists  the  many  German 
settlers  who  thronged  into  the  middle  colonies  with 
the  encouragement  of  the  British  government ;  and 
one  large  body  was  so  roughly  handled  in  New 
York,  that  it  floated  itself  down  the  Susquehannaon 
rafts,  to  find  a  resting  place  in  Pennsylvania. 

Another  element  of  separation  was  found  in  the 
disputes  between  the  colonies  as  to  their  common 
boundaries.  The  grants  made  by  different  Euro- 
pean countries  to  adventurers  naturally  overlapped, 
being  based  on  conflicting  claims  as  to  priority  in 
discovery.  So  also  did  the  grants  made  by  the 
British  government  at  different  dates,  either 
through  carelessness  or  through  ignorance  of  the 
geography  of  America.  As  this  in  many  cases  af- 
fected private  ownership  of  lands,  it  could  not  but 
prove  a  source  of  sharp  feeling  and  even  of  open 
strife.  Nor  were  these  disputes  entirely  settled 
until  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution  created  a 


24  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

tribunal  for  the  entire  republic  which  was  compe- 
tent to  pass  upon  them  with  authority. 

That  out  of  all  these  warring  elements  was  created 
an  American  nation,  was  the  result  of  a  providen- 
tial discipline  as  clearly  exhibited  in  history,  as  that 
by  which  the  twelve  tribes  of  Israel  were  welded 
into  a  Jewish  nationality. 

"  The  will  to  be  one  people,  as  a  body  politic,  in 
distinction  and  separation  from  all  other  peoples," 
is  what  constitutes  a  nation.  The  Nation  exists  in 
the  mind  of  the  people.  Some  one  quoted  to 
Frederick  Maurice  the  saying,  "  The  kingdom  of 
heaven  is  within  you."  "  Yes,"  he  replied,  "  and  so 
is  the  kingdom  of  England."  So  is  the  Republic  of 
America.  It  is  not  in  our  having  a  recognized  plan 
of  government,  or  lawfully  chosen  officials,  or  an 
effective  police  and  army,  that  we  are  one  people, 
but  in  the  will-to-be-one,  which  would  outlast  the 
loss  of  all  these,  if  that  were  inflicted  upon  us  by 
the  power  of  a  successful  invader. 

Italy  was  a  nation,  although  destitute  of  a  com- 
mon government  for  over  a  thousand  years,  and 
taunted  by  one  of  its  oppressors  with  being  "  merely 
a  geographical  expression."  Germany  was  a  nation, 
when  divided  among  over  a  hundred  sovereign  gov- 
ernments, each  vested  with  the  power  to  wage  war, 
coin  money,  levy  taxes,  and  suppress  every  expres- 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  25 

sion  of  national  sympathies  in  its  subjects.  It  used 
to  be  said  that  fly-specks  could  not  be  tolerated  on 
the  map  of  Germany,  else  some  of  its  microscopi- 
cal principalities  would  disappear  ;  and  a  neighbor 
of  mine  was  accustomed  to  take  his  morning  walk 
across  the  territories  of  two  sovereign  princes  and 
back  again.  But  all  the  time  there  was  the  will-to- 
be-one  in  the  German  heart,  waiting  for  a  Bismarck 
to  achieve  its  emancipation  from  '*  kleinstaterei" 

In  creating  this  will-to-be-one-people  in  the  mind 
of  any  section  of  our  race,  Providence  makes  use  of 
ail  kinds  of  secondary  agencies,  whose  effects  we 
can  trace  in  some  degree,  although  none  of  these, 
nor  all  of  them  together,  are  sufficient  to  account 
for  the  result.  They  are  the  indications  of  a  prov- 
idential purpose,  but  not  the  complete  disclosure 
of  its  methods.  It  is  therefore  instructive  to  ob- 
serve by  what  means  of  this  kind  the  process  of 
welding  together  the  colonial  elements  into  a  na- 
tional brotherhood  was  furthered. 

a.  Sympathy  between  the  different  colonies  was 
fostered  by  the  common  perils  and  difficulties  of 
their  position.  It  is  hard  for  us  to  realize  the 
hardships  which  the  first  settlers  endured,  and 
which  brought  to  nought  more  than  one  promising 
attempt  at  colonization.  The  vulgar  notion  that  a 
body  of  intelligent  people  landing  in  a  new  coun- 


26  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

try,  armed  with  all  the  knowledge  and  some  of  the 
apparatus  of  the  civilization  from  which  they  come, 
have  "all  the  world  before  them,  where  to  choose," 
is  contradicted  by  the  experience  of  every  colony 
established  on  this  continent.  Such  a  body  is 
almost  necessarily  a  small  one,  and  therefore 
destitute  of  the  industrial  strength  which  comes  of 
numbers  and  their  industrial  association.  It  is 
weak  in  the  presence  of  Nature,  and  can  make  but 
feeble  demands  upon  her  resources.  Its  first  efforts 
at  cultivation  are  necessarily  confined  to  the  thin 
and  comparatively  barren  soils  which  require  no 
drainage,  and  can  be  tilled  with  the  simplest 
implements  and  the  smallest  outlay  of  human 
effort.  That  the  crop  will  be  proportionally  scanty, 
goes  without  saying. 

The  standard  of  living  in  colonial  days,  not  at 
the  beginning  only,  but  down  to  the  last  century, 
was  such  as  the  American  of  to-day  can  hardly 
conceive  of.  Not  only  the  luxuries,  but  even  the 
comforts  of  our  time,  were  beyond  reach  ;  and  the 
feeble  and  sickly  among  the  early  inhabitants  had 
a  hard  time  to  exist,  especially  as  medical  aid  was 
to  be  had  only  at  a  few  favored  points.  When  the 
pastor  of  the  First  Church  in  Hartford  fell  ill,  he 
had  to  proceed  to  Boston  through  the  unbroken 
wilderness  to  find  a  doctor.  Outside  the  few  large 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  27 

towns,  which,  as  late  as  1790,  contained  not  three  per 
cent,  of  the  population,  there  was  a  total  absence 
of  even  the  ordinary  appliances  of  the  civilization  of 
that  day ;  and  this  was  all  the  more  severely  felt  as 
the  settlers  carried  with  them  to  the  New  World 
an  acquaintance  with  these  things,  and  a  demand 
for  them,  which  could  not  be  met  under  their  ex- 
isting conditions, 

b.  Along  with  these  privations  went  the  especial 
perils  of  their  position,  as  the  occupants  of  a  new 
and  hardly  broken  and  therefore  highly  malarious 
country,  under  a  climate  far  more  severe  in  both  its 
winters  and  its  summers  than  that  from  which  they 
or  their  fathers  came,  and  in  the  presence  of  wild 
beasts  and  poisonous  reptiles  from  which  Europe 
had  long  been  freed,  and  the  still  more  deadly 
presence  of  wild  men  who  regarded  their  coming  as 
a  personal  wrong. 

It  is  a  mistake  to  assume  that  William  Penn's 
treatment  of  the  Indians  with  kindness  and  justice 
was  an  isolated  fact  in  colonial  history.  The  Puri- 
tans anticipated  him  in  buying  from  the  red  men 
the  lands  they  desired  for  settlement;  and  in  one 
case  the  General  Court  of  Massachusetts  set  aside  a 
bargain  made  with  them  by  a  new  town,  on  the 
ground  that  it  was  unfair  to  the  Indians.  But 
the  contact  of  the  higher  and  the  lower  races  in  the 


28  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

extension  of  settlement  by  the  former,  has,  in  every 
land  and  every  time,  been  an  occasion  for  strife,  in- 
justice and  bloodshed.  For  this  the  body  of  the 
people  and  their  rulers  have  often  not  been  respon- 
sible, as  wrongs  inflicted  by  irresponsible  traders 
have  let  loose  the  violence  of  savage  warfare  on  un- 
suspecting settlers. 

In  America  the  peril  was  complicated  and  in- 
creased by  two  circumstances.  The  first  was  the 
existence  of  disputes  as  to  territory  among  the 
Indians  themselves,  involving  those  who  made  pur- 
chases of  one  party  in  hostilities  with  the  other. 
The  other  was  the  presence  of  the  French  on  the 
northern  and  western  borders  of  the  English  colonies, 
and  the  recognized  rule  that  war  between  England 
and  France  at  home  carried  with  it  a  requirement 
to  wage  war  in  America  also.  Had  this  war  been 
confined  to  military  operations  in  which  only 
European  settlers  were  engaged,  and  if  it  had  been 
divorced  from  the  bitterness  and  the  mercilessness 
which  always  attend  wars  of  religion,  the  results 
might  have  been  less  destructive.  But  the  enmity 
between  opposite  creeds,  which  had  deluged  Hol- 
land, France  and  Germany  with  blood,  was  in 
America  extended  to  the  colonists,  who  indeed  re- 
presented the  struggle  of  the  two  creeds  for  the 
possession  of  America,  and  were  more  interested  in 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  29 

that  struggle  than  any  one  in  Europe  could  be. 
With  this  bitterness  went  the  readiness  on  both 
sides  to  invoke  "  the  tomahawk  and  the  scalping- 
knife  of  the  savage  "  to  maintain  the  superiority  of 
Protestantism  to  Romanism,  or  the  opposite. 
Women  and  children  on  both  sides  the  line  were 
cruelly  butchered,  or  carried  into  a  captivity  worse 
than  death,  by  way  of  evincing  the  superiority  of 
one  type  of  Christian  teaching  to  its  rival. 

Out  of  this  evil,  however,  God  brought  good,  in 
that  it  forced  the  English  colonists  into  a  closer 
association  for  common  defence,  and  began  the 
work  of  consolidating  isolated  settlements  into  larger 
political  units.  Even  where  this  was  not  done,  the 
news  of  disaster  falling  upon  the  people  of  one 
colony  from  a  source  which  might  prove  equally 
prolific  of  harm  to  every  other,  must  have  fostered 
a  sympathy  with  the  Protestants  of  common  speech 
and  allied  if  not  identical  faith,  who  had  thus  suf- 
fered at  the  hands  of  the  common  enemy.  That 
word  "  Protestant "  was  a  potent  spell  in  colonial 
times,  and  finds  an  echo  in  Chatham's  great  speeches 
on  the  American  problem.  It  expressed  what  was 
the  common  element  in  the  creed  of  all  but  a  few 
of  the  British  colonists,  and  the  contrast  between 
them  and  their  French  rivals. 

c.  Economic  necessities,  growing  out   of  differ- 


30  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

ence  of  climate  and  soil,  helped  to  weld  the  colonists 
together  by  fostering  commercial  intercourse. 
Thus  from  the  first,  New  England  was  unable  to 
feed  her  population,  and  exchanged  her  tar,  pine- 
lumber,  fish  and  fish-oil  for  the  corn  and  wheat  of 
the  colonies  to  the  southward.  Long  Island  Sound 
was  very  early  a  channel  of  commerce  of  the  greatest 
importance  to  the  country,  and  the  Yankee  skipper 
became  a  familiar  figure  in  every  port  on  the  Atlantic 
coast  down  to  Savannah.  This  natural  commerce, 
growing  out  of  differences  of  climate  and  productive 
capacity,  fostered  no  rivalry,  and  accustomed  men 
to  see  and  know  each  other  as  human  beings.  They 
felt  that  they  were  creatures  of  the  same  blood  and 
had  neither  hoofs  nor  horns  to  mark  a  difference  of 
species.  Local  prejudices  were  broken  down,  if  not 
for  the  mass  of  men,  at  least  for  the  wealthier  and 
more  influential  class  among  them  ;  and  a  readiness 
for  cooperation  was  established,  which  was  of  the 
first  value  in  the  critical  years  which  preceded  the 
struggle  for  independence. 

d.  A  great  uniting  force  was  found  in  a  common 
religious  interest,  which  sprang  up  before  the  middle 
of  the  eighteenth  century.  While  religious  zeal 
had  been  a  controlling  force  with  many,  if  not  most, 
of  the  settlers  of  British  America,  there  had  been  a 
marked  decline  in  the  interest  in  such  matters  in 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  31 

the  generations  which  succeeded  them.  This  has 
been  a  very  common  attendant  of  extensive  migra- 
tion in  every  age.  The  fine  threads  of  association 
with  long  established  usage  and  habit,  like  the  deli- 
cate roots  on  which  many  plants  depend  for  their 
nourishment,  are  broken  in  transplanting.  Unless 
the  habits  of  religious  observance  are  rooted  very 
deep  in  heart-piety,  there  is  apt  to  be  a  relapse  into 
careless  and  indifferent  ways,  and  a  loss  of  hold  on 
the  unseen  reality. 

Even  among  the  Puritans  of  New  England  there 
was  a  marked  cooling  of  the  religious  atmosphere 
with  every  generation,  in  spite  of  the  "  reforming 
synods,"  which  were  convened  to  counteract  it. 
Such  contrivances  as  the  "  half-way  covenant "  had 
to  be  devised,  to  keep  the  children  and  grand-chil- 
dren of  the  first  Puritan  settlers  from  falling  utterly 
away  from  church  connection.  The  same  difficulty 
was  felt  everywhere — among  the  Dutch  Reformed 
of  New  York,  the  Quakers  of  Pennsylvania,  the 
Presbyterians  of  the  middle  and  border  colonies, 
and  the  Episcopalians  of  New  York  and  the  South. 
It  seemed  likely  that  the  American  was  to  become 
a  shrewd  and  wideawake  trader  or  cultivator,  with 
a  sharp  outlook  on  the  world  he  lived  in,  but  no 
uplook  to  any  other  world  whatever.  His  religious- 
ness had  become  too  generally  a  compliance  with 


32  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

traditional  forms,  and  a  fervor  of  partisan  interest 
about  the  matters  in  which  he  differed  from  his 
fellow-Christians,  rather  than  about  the  much 
greater  matters  on  which  he  professed  agreement 
with  them. 

From  this  peril  of  utter  decay  and  desolation  in 
spiritual  matters,  the  country  was  saved  by  the 
Great  Awakening.  From  its  general  coincidence 
with  the  Methodist  movement  in  England,  and 
from  the  prominence  of  Whitefield  in  its  later  devel- 
opments, this  very  commonly  has  been  regarded 
a  part  of  that  vast  revival.  But  America  takes 
precedence  of  England  in  the  matter  by  a  good 
many  years.  The  "  Holy  Club  "  was  not  gathered 
at  Oxford  until  1729,  and  it  was  ten  years  later 
that  John  and  Charles  Wesley  underwent  the 
change  which  brought  them  "  peace  in  believing  " 
and  made  them  preachers  of  "  salvation  through 
faith."  But  the  Great  Awakening  began  in  1719 
in  northern  New  Jersey,  under  the  preaching  of  a 
Dutch  "dominie,"  Jacob  Frelinghuysen,  and  ex- 
tended to  the  neighboring  Presbyterian  church  in 
New  Brunswick  in  1729,  through  the  earnest 
preaching  of  Gilbert  Tennent.  Five  years  later,  in 
1734,  it  showed  its  power  under  the  preaching  of 
Jonathan  Edwards  in  the  Connecticut  valley. 

It  was  not  until  the  arrival  of  Whitefield  at  Phil- 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  33 

adelphia  in  1739,  that  the  two  movements  really 
came  into  touch  and  their  substantial  identity  was 
perceived.  Edwards  and  Tennent  recognized  in 
the  eloquent  English  preacher  a  powerful  promoter 
of  the  spiritual  transformation  for  which  they  were 
laboring,  and  one  whose  eminence  as  an  orator  and 
other  qualities  would  give  him  access  to  many  who 
would  not  give  them  a  hearing.  As  a  clergyman  in 
English  orders  he  was  acceptable  to  many  who  dis- 
liked "  dissenters."  As  a  staunch  Calvinist,  he  was 
welcomed  by  the  orthodox  Congregationalists  and 
Presbyterians  generally,  though  by  no  means  uni- 
versally. As  a  speaker  of  wonderful  voice  and 
power  over  the  emotions,  he  reached  many  who 
had  no  prejudices  of  a  theological  kind  to  be  either 
conciliated  or  ruffled.  Even  the  Friends  flocked  to 
hear  a  man  who  spoke  from  his  heart  to  the  hearts 
of  men,  and  who  could  not  be  classed  as  a  hireling 
for  his  acceptance  of  salary  or  stipend  of  any  sort. 
His  wonderfully  successful  mission  thus  worked  to 
break  down  or  weaken  the  sectarian  feelings  which 
had  tended  to  isolate  Americans  from  each  other, 
and  to  bring  to  the  front  those  matters  about  which 
all  Christians  were  in  agreement.  He  gave  men  of 
various  ways  of  thinking  and  believing  a  common 
interest  in  the  work  he  was  doing,  and  a  new 
standard  of  judgment  by  which  to  estimate  the 
lesser  things  about  which  they  differed. 


34  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

For  social  and  national  purposes  the  Great 
Awakening  was  no  less  important,  as  tending  to 
draw  men  out  of  their  colonial  isolation,  and 
make  them  feel  they  had  a  common  country. 
The  news  that  reached  them  from  other  colonies 
as  to  the  progress  of  the  revival  was  read  with  a 
lively  emotion,  which  became  a  source  of  interest 
in  those  colonies.  Preachers  crossed  colonial 
boundaries,  as  Whitefield  had  done  in  his  progress 
from  Boston  to  Savannah,  to  proclaim  the  good 
news  of  God.  Gilbert  Tennent  went  to  Boston  at 
Whitefield's  request,  and  preached  there  for  months 
with  great  acceptance  and  success.  Shubbael 
Stearns  and  Daniel  Marshall  left  Connecticut 
to  labor  among  the  poor  whites  of  the  southern 
colonies,  and  there  gathered  the  Baptist  churches, 
which  were  to  become  the  nucleus  of  the  strongest 
religious  body  in  those  states.  In  this  way  men 
were  raised  up  to  form  personal  centres  of 
public  interest  for  the  whole  or  various  parts  of 
the  country,  while  the  people  were  kept  from 
sinking  into  mere  animalism  through  spiritual 
decay. 

e.  The  next  uniting  force  was  found  in  the  rise 
of  native  Americans  to  eminence,  which  made 
them  objects  of  social  pride  and  congratulation  to 
the  people  of  every  colony. 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  35 

Benjamin  Franklin  naturally  takes  the  first 
place  in  this  series.  A  native  of  New  England, 
but  an  adopted  citizen  of  Philadelphia,  then  the 
chief  city  of  the  country,  he  already  belonged  to 
more  than  a  single  colony.  His  public  spirit 
identified  him  with  every  plan  for  the  improvement 
of  the  community  in  which  he  lived,  and  his 
scientific  investigations  gave  him  a  European  fame, 
of  which  his  countrymen  were  justly  proud. 
His  possession  of  a  style  at  once  graceful  and 
popular,  and  his  shrewd  sense  of  American  needs 
and  faults,  enabled  him  to  become  the  popular 
philosopher  of  America ;  while  his  freedom  from 
theological  bias  of  any  kind  commended  him  to 
many  who  had  no  relish  for  Whitefield  or  Tennent. 

As  if  to  make  his  personal  influence  more 
effective,  the  British  government  gave  him  the 
appointment  of  postmaster-general  for  the  colonies, 
thus  bringing  him  into  official  relations  with 
the  whole  population  from  Maine  to  Georgia,  and 
into  personal  contact  with  very  many  of  them. 
Franklin  was  a  man  to  make  the  most  of  this. 
Of  a  sociable  disposition,  ready  to  meet  every  man 
on  his  own  ground,  and  skilful  in  conciliating 
regard,  he  soon  impressed  Americans  generally 
with  the  shrewdness  of  his  judgments,  the  breadth 
of  his  sympathies,  and  his  devotion  to  what  he 


36  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

early  called  "  my  country,"  meaning  not  England, 
nor  any  single  American  colony,  but  the  unity  of 
them  all. 

The  preeminence  he  thus  held,  Franklin  yielded 
without  objection  or  complaint  to  another  American, 
whom  he  and  other  discerning  men  recognized  as 
the  first  in  the  land.  The  Hebrew  historian  says, 
"  The  Lord  raised  up  judges,  which  saved  them 
out  of  the  hand  of  them  that  spoiled  them." 
And  in  no  way  is  the  good  providence  of  God 
more  clearly  manifested  in  a  country's  behalf, 
than  in  the  appearance  of  the  needed  man  at  the 
crisis  which  calls  for  him. 

George  Washington  was  the  man  "  raised  up " 
for  the  American  people,  and  for  the  day  of  trial 
in  which  he  appeared.  His  greatness  did  not  lie 
in  versatility  of  intellect,  or  in  wide  knowledge  of 
what  men  had  thought  and  done  in  the  past. 
Men  of  much  greater  mental  force  and  practical 
capacity  for  solving  the  problems  of  the  statesman, 
sat  in  his  cabinet,  but  never  overshadowed  their 
chief.  It  was  his  weight  of  character,  his  un- 
compromising devotion  to  duty,  his  readiness 
for  any  sacrifice  that  his  country  asked  of  him, 
and  his  unswerving  integrity,  which  commanded 
for  him  the  reverence  of  his  contemporaries, 
and  have  led  posterity  to  give  him  the  foremost 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  37 

place  among  the  modern  world's  great  men. 
When  other  men  failed  the  country,  and  the  clay 
mixed  with  iron  showed  itself  in  the  composition 
of  their  characters,  nothing  but  the  pure  gold  of  a 
heroic  manhood  was  seen  in  his.  His  personality 
was  a  tower  on  which  the  state  rested  with  safety, 
and  he  never  stooped,  as  did  vulgar  conquerors, 
to  use  his  influence  or  his  popularity  for  his  own 
aggrandizement.  He  gave  himself  without  reserve 
to  his  country,  and  he  asked  nothing  in  return  but 
the  satisfaction  of  being  a  free  citizen  of  the  land 
he  had  made  free. 

In  his  personality  we  see  much  that  he  owed  to  the 
traditions  of  the  country  from  which  he  cut  America 
loose  by  his  sword.  English  characteristics  pre- 
dominated the  colony  of  his  birth,  and  found  a  sen- 
sitive field  of  influence  in  his  character.  Englishmen 
of  like  spirit  with  himself  helped  to  mould  his 
thought.  Tradition  points  to  the  writings  of  Sir 
Matthew  Hale,  the  judge  who  created  the  standard 
of  that  high  office  for  the  English-speaking  race,  as 
having  exercised  an  especially  marked  influence 
upon  young  Washington.  He  naturally  relished 
the  best  and  the  noblest  of  what  the  old  country 
had  to  offer  him,  and  absorbed  it  into  his  character. 
But  from  the  first,  he  was  an  American  in  his  sym- 
pathies as  in  his  activities,  and  the  actual  specimens 


38  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

of  English  character  with  whom  he  was  thrown  into 
contact  must  have  helped  to  make  his  Americanism 
more  pronounced.  The  bumptiousness  of  the  Eng- 
lishman never  found  a  fuller  exemplification  than  in 
the  insolence  with  which  Washington's  superior 
knowledge  was  scorned  on  Braddock's  expedition. 
In  Franklin  and  Washington,  America  began  to 
see  her  destiny  indicated.  The  severance  of  the 
people  from  English  standards,  which  began  with 
the  restoration  of  the  Stuarts,  was  coming  to  be  a 
generally  recognized  fact  of  the  situation,  and  col- 
onial America  was  becoming  conscious  of  a  higher 
vocation  than  that  of  a  dependency  upon  a  Euro- 
pean power. 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  39 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE  RENDING  OF  BONDS. 

PHILOSOPHY  and  science  alike  warn  us  against 
the  supposition  that  great  changes  are  suddenly 
effected.  "Nil  per  saltum"  the  great  saying  of 
Leibnitz,  is  as  true  in  the  sphere  of  human  as  of 
natural  development.  The  separation  of  the  British 
colonies  from  Great  Britain  was  the  outcome  of 
causes  whose  operation  we  can  trace  with  some 
degree  of  distinctness  for  more  than  a  century 
before  the  crisis  was  reached  in  1775. 

Up  to  the  return  of  the  Stuarts  in  1660,  America 
was  merely  a  copy  and  appendix  of  England,  reflect- 
ing the  spirit  and  mind  of  its  various  parties  in 
various  sections  of  our  country,  and  originating 
nothing  of  its  own,  except  Roger  Williams'  mani- 
festoes in  favor  of  absolute  toleration  of  religious 
differences.  But,  as  Carlyle  well  says,  the  Restora- 
tion marks  the  date  at  which  England  definitely 
turned  its  back  on  Puritan  ideals,  and  abandoned 
the  expectation  of  creating  a  community  whose 


40  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

governing  principle  should  be  the  will  of  God.  In 
America  there  was  no  Restoration,  except  in  a  super- 
ficial sense.  There  was  no  great  victory  of  an  anti- 
Puritan  party,  and  no  alteration  of  the  standards  of 
right.  Virginia  and  Maryland  indeed  passed  from 
Puritan  to  Cavalier  rule,  but  Puritanism  always  had 
been  an  external  thing  in  those  colonies.  New 
England,  by  far  the  most  important  and  populous 
section  of  America,  and  that  in  which  alone  an 
intellectual  movement  independent  of  England  had 
been  begun,  and  had  been  secured  by  the  establish- 
ment of  an  adequate  machinery  of  education, 
remained  Puritan  as  before.  It  is  true  that  there 
was  a  decline  of  religious  fervor,  which  might  have 
proved  fatal  if  it  had  continued ;  but  there  was  no 
change  in  the  standard  of  conduct  which  was  before 
the  mind  of  the  people  ;  and  when  religious  zeal 
revived,  that  standard  reappeared  as  vigorously  as 
before. 

This  Puritanism  has  become  a  characteristic  fea- 
ture of  the  American  mind.  It  has  pervaded  the 
religious  and  social  life  of  the  whole  country,  reach- 
ing those  bodies  which  seemed  the  most  remote 
from  the  influence.  The  canons  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  synods  of  the  Archdiocese  of  Baltimore 
exhibit  its  influence,  no  less  than  the  resolutions 
adopted  by  the  conferences  and  assemblies  of 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  41 

Protestant  churches.  It  has  left  its  trace  on  our 
literature  and  art,  which  are  freer  from  lubricity  of 
every  kind  than  those  of  any  other  modern  people. 
The  beginnings  of  an  American  literature  are 
another  indication  of  the  development  of  a  national 
spirit.  Much  was  written  and  printed  in  New 
England  during  the  Commonwealth  period,  but  it 
was  little  else  than  an  echo  of  what  was  said  and 
thought  in  England.  Roger  Williams  is  the  excep- 
tion, as  already  said.  After  him,  the  first  really 
American  man  of  letters  is  the  much  abused  Cotton 
Mather,  whose  wearisome  pedantries  and  fussy 
pieties  have  robbed  him  of  the  honor  due  to  him, 
and  made  him  a  favorite  target  for  depreciatory 
biography.  It  is  Fitz-Greene  Halleck  who  points 
out  that  Cotton  Mather  possessed  one  very  notable 
literary  gift — the  power  to  draw  a  pen-picture  of  a 
man  in  such  a  fashion  as  to  make  him  conceivable 
and  intelligible.  To  his  facile  pen  we  owe  such 
portraits  of  nearly  one  hundred  and  fifty  of  his 
contemporaries,  and  men  and  women  of  the  pre- 
ceding generation  in  New  England.  If  these  had 
been  portraits  on  canvas,  thus  recognizable,  how- 
ever roughly  drawn,  they  would  have  been  highly 
valued.  But  his  most  notable  book,  and  the  one 
which  best  expresses  what  was  characteristic  of  the 
new  America,  is  his  "  Essays  to  do  Good."  It  has 


42  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

Franklin's  testimony  to  its  importance,  in  that  he 
told  Mather's  son  that  it  had  exercised  a  decisive 
influence  over  his  own  life. 

Without  ignoring  John  Woolman,  in  whose  one 
book  the  long  series  of  Quaker  journals  blossomed 
into  a  thing  of  beauty,  we  must  see  in  Franklin  the 
next  notable  representative  of  the  American  spirit 
in  literature.  America  was  his  country.  He  felt 
his  relation  to  the  whole  land  as  no  other  men  did 
as  yet.  Whether  it  be  his  "  Poor  Richard,"  or 
his  "  Essays,"  or  his  "  Autobiography,"  we  see  the 
man  of  sympathies  and  interests  no  longer  insular, 
and  least  of  all  provincial.  His  repeated  visits  to 
England  but  served  to  make  him  less  English  than 
other  men,  and  to  wean  him  from  the  childish 
loyalty  to  kings  and  nobles  which  was  cherished  by 
the  femininely-minded  of  his  time,  as  by  the  same 
class  in  our  day. 

It  was,  however,  England  herself  that  was  the 
chief  agent  in  severing  the  bonds  which  bound  the 
thirteen  colonies  to  her.  The  first  step  she  took  in 
removing  their  apprehensions  of  the  French  domi- 
nation, by  overthrowing  that  power  in  Canada.  So 
long  as  the  St.  Lawrence  was  in  French  hands,  the 
American  colonies  were  obliged  to  cherish  the  con- 
nection with  Great  Britain  as  a  protection  against 
France.  With  Wolfe's  victory  at  Quebec  their 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  43 

hands  were  free  as  regards  their  relations  with 
England,  and  some  Englishmen  at  the  time  were 
shrewd  enough  to  see  this.  "  If  the  people  of  our 
colonies,"  wrote  one,  "  find  no  check  in  Canada, 
they  will  extend  themselves  almost  without  bounds 
into  the  inland  parts.  They  will  increase  infinitely 
from  all  causes.  What  the  consequences  will  be  to 
have  a  numerous,  hardy,  independent  people,  pos- 
sessed of  a  strong  country,  communicating  little  or 
not  at  all  with  England,  I  leave  to  your  own  reflec- 
tions. ...  A  neighbor  that  keeps  us  in  some  awe 
is  not  always  the  worst  of  neighbors.  By  eagerly 
grasping  an  extensive  territory,  we  may  run  the 
risk,  and  at  no  very  distant  period,  of  losing  what 
we  now  possess." 

The  war  with  France  for  North  America  brought 
with  it  another  evil  for  England,  in  that  it  led  to 
the  most  exaggerated  notions  of  the  wealth  of  the 
colonials,  and  along  with  these  the  purpose  to 
make  them  contribute  to  the  cost  of  maintaining 
the  British  Empire.  The  officers  who  came  back 
from  America  brought  with  them  accounts  of  the 
admirable  style  in  which  they  had  been  entertained 
in  American  homes,  of  the  table  silver  and  naperies, 
the  throng  of  black  servants,  the  fine  clothes  of 
both  sexes,  and  the  like.  The  truth  is  that  the 
colonial  American  was  fond  of  show,  and  especially 


44  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

so  when  there  was  somebody  from  the  Old  World 
before  whom  to  exhibit  his  possessions.  He  liked 
finery,  and  he  was  commonly  in  debt  for  it.  The 
country  was  one  of  large  hopes  and  expectations, 
somewhat  like  a  "  boomer  "  town  on  our  western 
frontier.  Most  people  were  rich  in  land  only,  and 
they  came  to  be  called  "  land-poor."  They  were 
going  to  be  wealthy  some  day  through  the  sale  of 
their  lands,  and  in  the  meantime  they  might  afford 
a  little  extravagance. 

Joshua  Gee,  writing  in  1750,  with  the  insight  into 
American  conditions  afforded  by  an  acquaintance 
with  the  ledgers  of  the  London  traders,  declared 
the  colonies  to  be  poor  and  in  debt,  and  only  need- 
ing a  little  encouragement  to  continue  so.  "  Not  a 
fourth  part  of  their  products  redounds  to  their  own 
profit,  for  out  of  all  that  comes  here,  they  only 
carry  back  clothing  and  other  accommodations  for 
their  families.  .  .  .  All  these  advantages  we  receive 
by  the  plantations,  besides  the  mortgages  on  the 
planters'  estates  and  the  high  interest  they  pay  us, 
which  is  very  considerable ;  and  therefore  very 
great  care  ought  to  be  taken  that  they  are  not'  put 
under  too  many  difficulties,  but  encouraged  to  go 
on  cheerfully." 

In  the  struggle  with  the  colonies  over  the  propo- 
sition to  tax  them  without  their  consent,  the  British 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  45 

government  naturally  relied  on  the  tenor  of  laws 
passed  at  various  times,  in  which  the  supremacy  of 
King  and  Parliament  over  the  colonies  was  asserted 
or  assumed.  If  the  question  were  to  be  settled  by 
legal  precedents,  Americans  had  no  case  whatever. 
It  is  a  weakness  of  the  English  mind  to  assume 
that  legal  precedents  are  adequate  for  such  a  pur- 
pose. But  a  state  of  facts  had  arisen  in  America, 
which  those  old  formulas  could  not  cover,  however 
well  stretched  for  the  purpose.  From  the  struggle 
with  America,  England  herself  learned  the  necessity 
of  adapting  the  formula  to  the  fact  in  another  fash- 
ion, and  of  recognizing  that  a  high-spirited  people, 
competent  to  assert  their  equality  with  the  best, 
will  not  submit  to  be  kept  in  leading-strings  by  a 
"  mother  country,"  when  they  have  grown  strong 
enough  to  walk  alone. 

Another  lesson  administered  by  the  American 
resistance  is  that  there  are  other  precedents  than 
those  of  law.  Most  of  the  laws  evoked  from  the 
statute-book  for  the  confusion  of  Americans,  had 
been  ignored  or  violated  by  them  with  the  full 
knowledge  of  the  British  government,  almost  from 
the  dates  of  their  passage.  Sir  Robert  Walpole 
laughed  at  the  idea  of  enforcing  the  laws  which  for- 
bade the  direct  trade  between  English  colonies  and 
those  of  France  and  Spain  in  the  West  Indies, 


46  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

declaring  that  England's  interest  was  in  winking  at 
its  development,  since  only  thus  could  Americans 
obtain  the  silver  needed  to  pay  for  their  purchases 
of  British  manufactures.  Smuggling  had  risen  to 
the  rank  of  legitimate  trade  in  America,  employing 
the  ships  of  such  men  as  John  Hancock,  when  the 
British  ministry,  in  the  interests  of  the  revenue, 
undertook  to  suppress  it.  Collision  under  such 
circumstances  was  unavoidable,  and  English  blun- 
dering thus  managed  to  array  the  most  timid  and 
conservative  class  in  the  community  on  the  side  of 
independence. 

There  were  others  who  desired  independence  for 
reasons  very  different  from  those  which  animated 
John  Hancock.  Religious  liberty  was  felt  to  be  im- 
perilled by  the  continuance  of  the  connection  with 
Great  Britain. 

The  position  of  the  Church  of  England  in  its  re- 
lation to  the  State  was  very  different  in  1775  from 
what  it  has  been  for  the  last  forty  years.  No  per- 
son not  of  her  communion  was  allowed  to  fill  even 
an  office  in  an  English  municipality,  and  every 
member  of  Parliament  must  take  the  communion  at 
her  hands  before  he  could  take  his  seat.  A  tithe- 
charge  for  the  support  of  her  clergy  was  levied  on 
the  produce  of  English  land,  and  in  the  cities 
"  Easter  dues  "  were  collected  as  a  substitute  for 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  47 

this,  and  enforced  by  distraint.  The  bishops' 
courts  had  sole  jurisdiction  over  marriages,  divorces, 
wills  and  some  other  matters ;  and  a  large  part  of 
the  Scotch-Irish  emigration  was  due  to  the  refusal 
of  these  courts  to  acknowledge  the  validity  of  a 
marriage  not  solemnized  by  an  Episcopal  rector  or 
a  Roman  Catholic  priest. 

The  principle  universally  recognized  on  the  con- 
tinent at  this  time,  that  the  religion  of  the  ruler  is 
that  of  his  country — Cujus  regio,  ejus  religio, — was 
accepted  also  as  regards  the  parts  of  the  British 
empire.  A  Protestant  Church  was  maintained  in 
Ireland  at  the  expense  of  the  Roman  Catholic  pop- 
ulation, and  in  defiance  of  their  wishes.  Nothing 
but  the  "  resistance  unto  blood  "  of  the  Scotch  peo- 
ple had  availed  to  force  the  British  government  to 
abandon  the  plan  of  assimilating  the  Church  of 
Scotland  to  that  of  England ;  and  the  pledge  given 
at  the  union  of  the  two  countries  for  the  mainte- 
nance of  the  liberties  of  the  Kirk  had  been  shame- 
lessly broken  by  the  establishment  of  patronage, 
in  place  of  the  free  choice  of  ministers  by  the  con- 
gregations. 

In  America  this  principle  had  been  applied  as  far 
as  possible,  in  the  establishment  of  the  Church  of 
England  in  Virginia,  Maryland,  New  York,  New 
Jersey  and  the  Carolinas.  In  all  these  colonies  the 


48  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

property  of  men  of  all  creeds  was  taxed  for  the  sup- 
port of  an  Episcopal  clergy.  A  law  passed  by  the 
legislature  of  New  York  to  provide  public  support 
for  the  Protestant  clergy,  had  been  interpreted  by 
the  royal  governor  to  mean  those  of  the  Church  of 
England  only,  since  that  was  the  king's  church, 
although  the  intention  of  the  legislature  had  been 
entirely  different.  And  while  the  sentiment  in  fa- 
vor of  religious  equality  had  grown  with  every  year 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  there  had  been  little  or 
no  abatement  of  the  claims  of  the  Episcopal  Church 
to  supremacy  over  all  others. 

The  thirteen  colonies  were  by  law  annexed  to  the 
diocese  of  London,  and  left  to  the  care  of  this 
single  English  bishop.  Three  times  a  beginning 
had  been  made  toward  establishing  a  bishop  in 
America,  and  three  times  it  had  come  to  nothing, 
in  a  way  which  the  "  dissenters  "  naturally  thought 
providential.  The  first  time  it  was  defeated  by  the 
downfall  of  Archbishop  Laud,  at  the  outbreak  of 
the  troubles  between  Charles  I.  and  the  Long  Par- 
liament. After  the  Restoration,  Lord  Clarendon, 
who  quite  equalled  Laud  in  his  devotion  to  Anglican 
interests,  had  the  matter  in  hand  and  the  necessary 
papers  almost  ready  for  the  king's  seal,  when  his 
downfall  at  the  hands  of  the  royal  harem  prevented 
it.  Queen  Anne,  as  a  zealous  Anglican,  was  favor- 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  49 

able  to  the  scheme,  and  the  papers  were  again 
ready  for  the  great  seal,  when  her  death  stopped 
it. 

The  first  two  Georges  cared  nothing  for  the 
Church  of  England  ;  but  the  accession  of  George 
III.  seemed  to  open  the  way  for  action.  He  was  a 
fervent  churchman,  and  the  Archbishop  of  Canter- 
bury, Dr.  Seeker,  was  greatly  interested  in  the  con- 
dition of  the  Church  in  the  colonies,  as  was  Dr. 
Porteous,  Bishop  of  Chester  (after  1787,  of  London), 
a  native  of  Virginia.  Under  these  auspices,  the 
plan  for  an  American  bishop  was  revived,  with 
the  assurance  that  nothing  more  was  intended  than 
to  furnish  the  American  churches  of  that  communion 
with  proper  oversight,  to  establish  canonical  discip- 
line for  the  clergy,  and  to  make  it  possible  for 
Episcopalians  born  in  the  colonies  to  obtain  episco- 
pal confirmation  without  undertaking  a  costly  and 
dangerous  sea-voyage. 

The  sincerity  of  these  assurances  was  not  called 
in  question  by  those  who  took  part  in  the  loud  and 
very  general  protest  against  the  measure.  The 
ground  of  the  protest,  in  which  many  Episcopalians, 
especially  in  Virginia,  joined,  was  that  the  appoint- 
ment of  a  bishop  might  be  followed  at  any  time  by 
an  act  of  parliament  conferring  upon  him  all  the 
powers  and  privileges  within  his  diocese  which  were 


50  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

enjoyed  by  his  prelatic  brethren  in  England  and 
Ireland.  Bishops'  courts,  a  universal  tithe,  test  and 
corporation  acts — all  these  might  follow  in  his  train  ; 
and  so  long  as  the  British  Parliament  enjoyed  the 
power  to  legislate  for  the  colonies  in  such  matters, 
there  was  no  security  against  the  imposition  of 
these  and  similar  restraints  upon  religious  liberty  in 
America. 

The  Puritans  and  Presbyterians  of  New  England 
and  the  middle  colonies  took  the  leading  part  in 
this  resistance  to  an  American  bishopric,  and  cor- 
responded with  the  English  dissenters  in  keeping 
watch  upon  the  movement.  For  ten  years  they 
held  a  joint-convention  of  delegates  every  year  to 
concert  measures  for  the  prevention  of  the  step. 
And  they  naturally  welcomed  the  final  outbreak  of 
war  for  independence,  as  disposing  of  this  as  well  as 
other  perils. 

After  independence  had  been  secured,  the  new 
government  cooperated  with  American  Episcopal- 
ians in  obtaining  bishops  for  their  independent 
Church.  It  was  not  against  bishops,  but  against 
English  prelacy  and  its  apparatus  for  exercising 
authority  over  dissenters,  that  the  objection  lay. 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE  WAR  FOR  INDEPENDENCE. 

AMERICA  never  had  a  "  revolution."  The  great- 
est change  which  occurred  in  our  history  was  not  a 
break  with  the  past.  The  spirit  of  destruction  for 
destruction's  sake  never  took  hold  of  the  American 
people.  The  government  they  cast  off  in  1776  was 
already  become  an  alien  force,  and  in  no  way  in- 
dispensable to  the  maintenance  of  the  public  order 
of  the  country.  In  the  main,  Americans  were  al- 
ready a  self-governing  people,  and  they  rose  against 
the  power  of  Great  Britain  rather  to  preserve  this 
liberty  than  to  acquire  it.  Very  little  change  was 
made  either  in  the  personnel  or  the  methods  of  po- 
litical rule  by  the  patriotic  party.  The  laws  re- 
mained unchanged,  and  their  enforcement  was  in 
the  same  hands  as  before.  Except  in  giving  an 
indefinite  leave  of  absence  to  the  royally  appointed 
governors  of  some  of  the  colonies,  there  was  not 
much  alteration  even  in  the  forms  employed,  and 
still  less  in  their  substance. 

The  expulsion  of  Great  Britain,  however,  from 


52  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

the  business  of  collecting  customs  and  managing 
military  affairs,  was  not  effected  without  great 
difficulty,  and  this  was  the  greater  because  the  con- 
tinuance of  British  rule  was  earnestly  desired  by  a 
considerable  body  of  the  colonists,  who  arrayed 
themselves  on  the  royal  side  openly,  or  gave  sym- 
pathy and  secret  support  to  it. 

Even  without  this  divided  condition  of  American 
opinion,  it  seemed  as  if  the  attempt  at  establishing 
independence  were  premature,  and  therefore  must 
end  in  failure.  The  population  of  the  colonies  in 
1754  had  been  estimated  at  1,428,003,  of  whom 
263,000  were  negro  slaves.  As  immigration  had 
come  to  a  pause  about  that  time,  the  increase  in 
the  following  twelve  years  cannot  have  brought  the 
number  up  to  2,000,000.  That  of  England  and 
Wales  alone  must  have  been  four  times  as  great. 
The  colonials  had  an  advantage  in  being  ac- 
customed to  the  use  of  fire-arms,  but  in  most  cases 
their  weapons  were  of  antique  make,  while  the 
supply  of  gunpowder  was  small  and  precarious. 
They  were  also  unused  to  discipline,  and  indisposed 
to  submit  to  it,  while  England  possessed  at  least 
the  skeleton  of  a  great  army,  which  had  won  dis- 
tinction in  recent  wars ;  and,  besides  recruiting  at 
home,  she  could  draw  upon  the  German  states  for 
a  supply  of  men.  The  conformation  of  the  country 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  53 

left  America  open  to  attack  at  a  score  of  places 
along  the  coast,  while  the  military  route  by  Lakes 
Champlain  and  George  and  the  Hudson  River  sug- 
gested an  advance  from  Canada. 

Especially  great  were  the  difficulties  of  America 
from  the  lack  of  the  manufactures  needed  to  equip 
and  support  an  army.  They  had  no  cloths  to  make 
uniforms,  no  canvas  for  tents,  no  shoes  and  no 
leather  to  make  them,  no  cannon  save  such  as  they 
could  borrow  or  buy  in  Europe,  no  gunpowder  for 
either  large  or  small  arms,  no  bunting  for  flags. 
Twice  the  patriotic  women  of  Philadelphia  searched 
their  household  stores,  and  sent  every  blanket  they 
could  spare  to  Washington's  forces ;  and  the  awn. 
ings  from  the  shops,  the  sails  from  the  ships,  and 
the  contents  of  the  sail-lofts  went  to  make  tents. 
It  was  a  conflict  between  the  first  manufacturing 
country  of  the  world  and  a  merely  agricultural 
community,  just  such  as  has  been  waging  in  South 
Africa  between  Great  Britain  and  the  Boers. 

At  the  outset  of  colonization,  indeed,  the  settlers 
of  BritisK  America  had  purposed  to  make  the  col- 
onies as  complete  and  well  equipped  as  the  mother 
country,  and  several  of  the  colonial  governments 
had  encouraged  manufactures,  either  by  premiums 
or  by  enforced  labor  in  spinning  and  weaving. 
Against  this  England  had  worked  with  great  sue- 


54  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

cess  through  her  Board  of  Trade  and  Plantations, 
through  laws  to  discourage  American  manufactures 
or  positively  forbid  them,  and  through  the  influence 
of  the  royal  governors.  With  this  the  colonial  love 
of  finery  had  cooperated,  and  on  the  first  prospect 
of  a  conflict  with  the  mother  country,  they  awoke 
to  the  fact  that  they  had  not  the  industries  re- 
quired for  conducting  such  a  struggle.  Even  the 
supply  of  salt  had  come  from  England,  and  the 
cessation  of  importations  produced  a  salt-famine 
throughout  the  colonies. 

Another  great  obstacle  to  success  was  the  people's 
lack  of  the  habit  of  cooperation  for  common  ends, 
which  had  unavoidably  resulted  from  their  com- 
parative isolation  from  one  another.  They  were 
much  less  Americans  than  Pennsylvanians,  Virgin- 
ians, and  so  forth.  In  the  first  fervors  of  popular 
enthusiasm  the  colonial  lines  were  all  but  forgotten, 
but  only  to  emerge  again  when  the  feeling  of  a 
common  interest  had  diminished.  The  leaders  of 
the  nation,  who  had  to  bear  the  burdens  of  the 
war,  had  no  such  body  of  steady  enthusiasm  behind 
them  as  supported  Lincoln  and  Grant  in  a  later 
struggle.  The  heroic  temper  was  not  wanting  in 
individuals,  but  it  did  not  characterize  the  mass  of 
the  people.  As  Mr.  Lecky  says,  we  have  to  look 
to  1861-65  for  the  heroic  period  of  our  history. 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  55 

While  there  were  those  who  from  the  first  pre- 
dicted the  success  of  the  American  cause,  this  con- 
fidence was  by  no  means  universal.  It  was  with 
sinking  of  heart  that  many  American  patriots  faced 
the  struggle  in  which  the  judicial  blindness  of  the 
English  government  had  involved  them.  In  that 
hour  men  turned  to  God  as  their  refuge  and  their 
strength,  and  rested  their  hope  of  a  good  issue  upon 
Him.  "  We  must  fight,"  said  Patrick  Henry  to  the 
legislature  of  Virginia ;  "  an  appeal  to  the  God  of 
hosts  is  all  that  is  left  us." 

At  the  opening  of  the  Continental  Congress  at  '} 
Philadelphia,  September,  1774,  Rev.  Jacob  Duch6 
was  invited  to  invoke  the  blessing  of  God  upon  it 
and  the  country.  As  an  Episcopalian  he  read  the 
psalm  appointed  for  the  day  (the  Thirty-fifth)  to 
men  who  had  just  received  the  intelligence  of  the 
Boston  massacre.  Its  words  must  have  seemed  to 
many  an  encouraging  voice  from  on  high : 

"  Plead  thou  my  cause,  O  Lord,  with  those  that 
strive  against  me :  and  fight  thou  against  them  that 
fight  ag^'nst  me. 

"Lay  hand  upon  the  shield  and  buckler,  and 
stand  up  to  help  me. 

"  Bring  forth  the  spear,  and  stop  the  way  against 
them  that  persecute  me  :  say  unto  my  soul,  I  am 
thy  salvation." 


56  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

Had  the  race  been  to  the  swift  and  the  battle  to 
the  strong,  Washington  and  his  associates  might 
have  ended  on  the  scaffold,  as  did  the  Canadian 
insurgents  of  1837,  an<^  as  did  Kiel  and  his  asso- 
ciates thirty  years  later.  But  Providence  is  not 
always  "  on  the  side  of  the  heaviest  battalions." 
The  course  of  events  was  such  as  to  impress  this 
truth  on  even  Benjamin  Franklin,  who,  with  all  his 
social  virtues,  was  as  unlikely  to  anticipate  divine 
aid  as  any  man  in  America.  Yet  it  was  he  who 
said  to  the  Constitutional  Convention  of  1787:  "  In 
the  beginning  of  the  contest  with  Great  Britain, 
when  we  were  sensible  of  danger,  we  had  daily 
prayer  in  this  room  for  the  divine  protection.  Our 
prayers,  sir,  were  heard,  and  they  were  graciously 
answered.  All  of  us  who  were  engaged  in  the 
struggle  must  have  observed  frequent  instances  of 
a  superintending  Providence  in  our  favor.  To  that 
kind  Providence  we  owe  this  happy  opportunity  of 
consulting  in  peace  upon  the  means  of  establishing 
our  future  national  felicity.  I  have  lived,  sir,  a  long 
time,  and  the  longer  I  live  the  more  convincing 
proof  I  see  of  this  truth — that  God  governs  in  the 
affairs  of  men.  And  if  a  sparrow  cannot  fall  to  the 
ground  without  his  notice,  is  it  probable  that  an 
empire  can  rise  without  his  aid  ?  "  * 

*  Madison  Papers,  II,  984-985. 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  57 

It  is  not  permitted  for  any  one  to  play  privy 
councillor  to  the  Almighty,  and  to  trace  all  the 
operations  of  his  guiding  hand  in  any  historical 
crisis.  But  a  few  things  we  may  indicate  as  less 
recondite  and  more  obvious  than  others ;  and  the 
first  of  these  is  the  raising  up  of  men  to  bear  the 
nation's  burdens  in  its  day  of  trial. 

Washington  was  God's  unique  gift  to  America. 
There  was  very  little  in  our  situation  that  was  cal- 
culated to  produce  and  foster  a  man  of  such  lofti- 
ness, simplicity,  and  devotion  to  the  public  good, 
and  at  the  same  time  a  man  who  was  capable  of 
taking  his  place  among  the  great  commanders  of  all 
time,  though  by  no  means  in  the  first  rank.  The 
arena  in  which  breadth  of  view  is  developed  is  not 
that  of  a  colony,  separated  by  half  the  earth  from 
the  great  states  of  the  civilized  world,  and  isolated 
from  its  neighbors  by  local  jealousies.  He  was  not 
the  creature  of  his  environment.  Indeed  we  never 
have  succeeded  in  creating  an  environment  which 
will  account  for  him.  He  stands  out  as  the  realized 
ideal  of  i\  ler,  citizen  and  patriot  before  the  Ameri- 
can mind,  as  Sir  Matthew  Hale  is  the  realized  ideal 
of  the  judge.  From  that  day  to  this  we  measure 
every  man  who  is  called  to  the  chief  magistracy, 
consciously  or  unconsciously,  by  his  moral  dimen- 
sions. The  American  people  will  never  be  satisfied 


58  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

with  less  unselfishness  or  less  wisdom  in  its  rulers, 
than  was  found  in  him. 

When  he  took  command  of  the  Continental  army 
in  1775,  he  was  at  once  felt  to  be  the  adequate  head 
of  the  national  forces.  He  saw  with  clearness 
through  the  plan  which  the  British  would  follow,  of 
cutting  the  confederacy  in  two,  or  perhaps  in  three, 
by  sundering  the  Middle  from  the  Eastern  States 
on  the  one  side,  and  from  the  Southern  on  the 
other.  To  meet  this  he  had  nothing  but  irregular 
forces,  an  army-chest  more  often  empty  than  full,  a 
divided  country  behind  him,  and  a  united  and 
powerful  enemy  in  his  front.  Nor  was  he  seconded 
with  ability  by  his  next  in  command.  Except 
Greene  of  Rhode  Island,  Sullivan  of  Massachusetts, 
and  Wayne  of  Pennsylvania,  it  is  impossible  to 
point  out  a  general  who  appreciated  his  plans  and 
fully  seconded  them.  Nor  was  he  in  a  position  to 
dismiss  others  from  the  places  they  so  inadequately 
filled.  He  had  to  work  with  such  tools  as  he  had, 
and  he  achieved  our  independence  in  spite  of  their 
defects. 

His  hold  upon  the  confidence  of  his  soldiers  was 
the  stronger  for  his  appealing  to  the  very  highest 
motives.  In  his  first  General  Order  to  the  army,  he 
used  words  afterward  quoted  by  Lincoln  in  a 
General  Order  of  1864:  "At  this  time  of  public 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  59 

distress  men  may  find  enough  to  do  in  the  service 
of  their  God  and  their  country  without  abandoning 
themselves  to  vice  and  immorality.  The  General 
hopes  and  trusts  that  every  officer  and  man  will 
endeavor  to  live  and  act  as  becomes  a  Christian 
soldier,  defending  the  dearest  rights  and  liberties  of  \ 
his  country." 

He  was  signally  aided  by  the  blindness  which 
Providence  seemed  to  have  inflicted  on  the  enemy. 
The  condition  of  the  public  services  in  Great 
Britain  was  at  the  lowest  ebb.  George  III.,  in  his 
eagerness  to  rid  himself  of  those  constitutional  re- 
strictions on  kingship  which  had  been  imposed  at 
the  Revolution  of  1688,  had  introduced  a  reign  of 
favoritism  and  corruption.  Before  the  war  broke 
out,  men  had  been  entrusted  with  important  places 
in  the  colonies  whose  only  claim  to  office  was  their 
subserviency  to  the  king.  It  was  due  to  them  in 
good  measure  that  his  rule  became  so  intolerable  to 
the  colonists.  The  Parliament  which  made  succes- 
sive experiments  in  shearing  the  wolf  by  taxing 
America^  was  the  very  worst  that  ever  bore  the 
name  in  English  history.  That  which  existed 
throughout  the  war  had  been  specially  chosen  for 
the  support  of  the  royal  policy  of  "  No  Compromise," 
and  while  better  than  some  of  its  predecessors  in 
point  of  morals,  was  not  a  whit  less  subservient  or 
unwise. 


60  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

The  selections  made  for  the  command  of  the 
British  armies  in  America  were  worthy  of  such  a 
ruler  and  such  a  government.  It  was  well  for  us 
that  James  Wolfe  lay  in  his  grave  at  Greenwich, 
and  that  no  masterly  eye,  such  as  that  of  Chatham, 
was  at  the  king's  service  to  pick  out  such  men  for 
commanding  places.  Cornwallis  was  the  only 
officer  on  the  British  side  who  showed  real  ability, 
and  an  appreciation  of  what  a  campaign  in  such  an 
extensive  country  must  mean,  and  he  was  hampered 
by  incompetence  in  his  superior  officers.  It  was 
Howe's  folly  that  sent  him  to  Yorktown,  to  be 
"  bottled  up  "  by  Washington  and  Rochambeau, 
instead  of  allowing  him  to  continue  his  northward 
march  to  join  the  main  body  of  the  forces.  As  for 
the  rest — Gates,  Burgoyne,  Howe,  Carleton — they 
take  rank  in  history  with  Braddock,  without  the 
tragic  ending  which  half  redeems  his  stupidity.  It 
is  said  that  on  one  occasion  some  one  talked  to 
Washington  of  a  plan  to  drive  Howe  out  of  the 
country.  "  Do  not  think  of  such  a  thing,"  he  re- 
plied ;  "  they  might  send  a  man  with  some  brains 
in  his  place."  It  is  proverbially  bad  policy  to 
"  despise  your  enemy  ; "  but  the  Americans  were 
driven  to  it  by  the  sight  of  an  enemy  in  command 
whose  most  characteristic  achievement  was  the  slow 
torture  of  the  prisoners  confined  in  the  prison-ships 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  61 

in  New  York  harbor,  and  whose  personal  vices  were 
the  jest  of  both  friend  and  foe. 

Nor  were  Washington's  allies  less  a  peril  to  be 
faced  than  his  foes.  The  alliance  with  France,  into 
which  the  quarrel  with  England  drove  America, 
may  have  been,  and  probably  was,  indispensable  as 
a  means  to  independence  ;  but  it  certainly  was  not 
from  any  affection  to  America,  or  desire  to  increase 
the  number  of  republics,  that  the  French  took  up 
our  cause.  It  was  to  avenge  the  defeats  sustained 
in  the  previous  war,  and  if  possible  to  recover  Can- 
ada to  the  French  crown.  It  needed  all  the  weight 
and  determination  of  Washington's  character  to 
prevent  the  struggle  being  diverted  to  that  end,  and 
to  keep  the  French  employed  to  bring  to  a  speedy 
end  the  war,  whose  prolongation  would  have  better 
suited  their  plans.  The  restoration  of  French  rule 
on  our  northern  frontier  would  have  been  a  distinct 
calamity  to  the  young  republic,  and  especially  so  if 
Canada  ten  years  later  had  fallen  under  the  power 
of  the  French  revolutionists.  They  would  have 
obtained  a  basis  of  operation  against  us,  which  they 
would  have  used  with  as  little  scruple  as  they  did 
their  neighborhood  to  the  republics  of  Holland  and 
Switzerland.  Such  a  peril  could  not  have  been 
foreseen  by  Washington  in  1781,  but  his  conviction 
that  Canada  would  be  better  in  English  than  in 


62  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

French  hands,  and  that  the  close  of  the  war  should 
not  be  delayed  to  secure  its  reconquest  by  France, 
proved  a  deliverance  of  the  country  from  great  em- 
barrassments in  the  near  future. 

Thus  ended  a  struggle,  of  which  Thomas  Pown- 
all,  who  had  negotiated  the  cooperation  of  the 
colonies  with  England  in  the  French  and  Indian 
War,  and  who  afterwards  had  governed  three  of 
them  in  succession  by  commission  from  the  Crown, 
wrote  to  Franklin  :  "  I  write  this  to  congratulate 
you  on  the  establishment  of  your  country  as  a  free 
and  sovereign  power,  taking  its  equal  station  among 
the  powers  of  the  world.  I  congratulate  you  in 
particular,  as  chosen  by  Providence  to  be  a  principal 
instrument  in  this  great  revolution, — a  revolution 
that  has  stronger  marks  of  Divine  interposition, 
superseding  the  ordinary  course  of  human  affairs, 
than  any  other  event  which  the  world  has  experi- 
enced." 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  63 


CHAPTER  VII. 

CHAOS  AND  CONSTRUCTION. 

THE  rejoicings  over  peace  had  hardly  closed, 
when  elements  of  disorder  appeared  in  the  new 
republic  which  threatened  its  destruction.  The  dis- 
content of  the  soldiers  with  the  Continental  Con- 
gress, which  had  no  money  to  pay  them  off,  brought 
the  peril  of  a  military  usurpation.  Fortunately  for 
the  country,  there  was  no  ambitious  soldier  of  suffi- 
cient eminence  to  accept  the  position  of  king  in  the 
face  of  Washington's  resolute  purpose  to  keep  king- 
ship at  a  distance.  It  was  to  him  that  the  discon- 
tented were  obliged  to  make  the  proposal,  and  from 
him  it  met  with  a  reception  which  put  an  end  to  it. 

Nor  was  this  the  only  quarter  from  which  the 
peril  of  personal  government  threatened  the  re- 
public. Americans  generally  had  grown  up  under 
the  shadow  of  a  throne,  and  it  was  not  only  the 
Tories  who  resented  the  proposition  to  substitute 
government  by  the  people.  A  very  considerable 
portion  of  the  American  people,  especially  in  the 
cities,  regarded  monarchy  as  the  only  workable 


64  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

scheme  of  government.  They  looked  for  a  speedy 
termination  to  "the  republican  experiment,"  pre- 
dicted the  establishment  of  an  aristocracy  as  well 
as  of  kingship,  and  in  fancy  distributed  the  honors 
of  the  new  system  among  themselves.  The  candi- 
date for  the  American  throne  was  even  selected, 
being  the  son  of  the  King  of  England  who  wore 
the  Hanoverian  title  of  Bishop  of  Osnabruck. 

And  it  did  seem  as  if  the  republic  were  unable  to 
weather  the  storms  which  began  to  gather  around 
it  in  its  youth,  and  must  give  place  to  some  plan  of 
stronger  government.  The  Articles  of  Confedera- 
tion, under  which  it  was  managed  directly  after 
1781,  were  a  loose  compact  among  the  states  for 
the  maintenance  of  a  general  legislative  body  with 
very  limited  powers.  Congress  (a  term  consecrated 
by  long  use  to  the  meeting  of  diplomatic  represen- 
tatives from  sovereign  states)  was  allowed  to  declare 
war  and  to  make  peace,  to  maintain  an  army  and 
navy  if  it  could  get  the  money  for  this  object  from 
the  states,  to  regulate  weights  and  measures,  and 
to  issue  paper  money,  but  not  to  raise  funds  for  its 
redemption.  There  was  no  general  executive 
except  boards  and  committees  created  by  Congress, 
and  no  general  judiciary,  except  an  admiralty  court 
to  punish  piracy  and  condemn  prizes  taken  by 
American  ships.  Above  all,  there  was  no  national 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  65 

revenue,  except  such  as  could  be  obtained  by  assess- 
ing the  states  ;  and  experience  had  shown  this  to 
be  a  very  uncertain  source  of  income.  An  attempt 
to  enlarge  the  powers  of  Congress  to  the  collection 
of  duties  on  imports  was  defeated  by  the  veto  of  a 
single  state — very  fortunately. 

Between  the  states  there  were  incessant  quarrels 
over  their  tariff  arrangements,  over  mutual  trade, 
over  the  fisheries  of  the  Chesapeake,  and  over 
other  matters.  Within  the  states  there  were  signs 
of  grave  disturbances,  and  in  some  cases  active 
insurrection  against  authority.  The  condition  of 
the  currency  made  it  impossible  for  men  to  pay 
their  debts,  and  those  against  whom  executions 
had  been  issued  were  liable  to  spend  in  a  debtors' 
prison  the  time  and  the  strength  needed  for  the 
support  of  their  families.  Hence  "  Shays'  Re- 
bellion "  in  Massachusetts,  which  was  an  uprising 
of  the  poorer  class  to  prevent  the  sitting  of  the 
courts  and  the  enforcement  of  the  laws. 

The  country  always  had  been  poor,  and  its 
poverty  had  been  deepened  by  the  ravages  of  the 
war,  and  by  the  diversion  of  labor  from  farming  to 
military  service.  Yet  the  war  itself  had  brought 
some  compensations  by  stimulating  the  growth 
of  small  industries  for  the  supply  of  articles  shut 
out  from  coming  from  Europe.  These  manufactures 


66  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

were  ruined  by  peace,  which  was  at  once  followed 
by  an  inflow  of  English  goods  out  of  all  proportion 
to  the  ability  of  the  people  to  pay  for  them. 
Naturally  this  deepened  discontent.  It  was  com- 
plained that  "  the  arm  which  had  prevailed  on 
the  field  of  battle,  was  paralyzed  in  the  workshop," 
and  a  demand  arose  for  a  national  authority  to 
give  American  labor  that  degree  of  protection 
which  was  at  that  time  extended  by  national 
governments  everywhere. 

Expert  observers  declared  that  the  economic 
difficulties  of  the  country  would  force  it  to  retrace 
its  steps  and  abandon  its  independence.  Lord 
Sheffield — the  friend  and  literary  executor  of 
Edward  Gibbon — published  a  book  on  American 
Commerce,  which  went  through  several  editions. 
He  claimed  to  prove  that  America  had  ruined 
itself  by  withdrawing  from  the  British  Empire, 
as  it  had  lost  the  English  market  for  ships  and 
ships'  supplies,  was  shut  out  from  trade  with  the 
English  colonies,  and  had  not  within  itself  the 
natural  resources  needed  for  the  establishment  of 
manufactures.  Tench  Coxe,  the  highest  American 
authority  on  industrial  statistics,  answered  the 
book  in  a  half-hearted  and  timid  way,  which 
showed  how  little  the  best-informed  Americans 
knew  of  the  possibilities  of  their  country,  and 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  67 

what  serious  apprehensions  were  entertained  by 
patriotic  citizens. 

Rev.  Josiah  Tucker,  the  Dean  of  Gloucester, 
who  in  1774  had  proposed  the  summary  ejection 
of  the  American  colonies  from  the  British  Empire 
as  an  alternative  to  war,  now  mocked  at  our 
dreams  of  political  unity :  "  As  for  the  future 
grandeur  of  America,  and  its  being  a  rising  empire 
under  one  head,  whether  republican  or  monarchical, 
it  is  one  of  the  idlest  and  most  visionary  notions 
that  was  ever  conceived,  even  by  writers  of  romance. 
For  there  is  nothing  in  the  genius  of  the  people, 
the  situation  of  their  country,  or  the  nature  of 
their  different  climates,  which  tends  to  countenance 
such  a  supposition.  .  .  .  Above  all,  when  those 
immense  inland  regions  beyond  the  back  settle- 
ments, which  are  still  unexplored,  are  taken  into 
account,  they  form  the  highest  probability  that 
the  Americans  never  can  be  united  into  one  compact 
empire,  under  any  species  of  government  what- 
ever. Their  fate  seems  to  be  a  disunited  people  till 
the  end  of  time." 

The  British  government  did  its  best  to  make 
the  prophecies  of  Lord  Sheffield  true.  It  took 
every  pains  to  prevent  the  emigration  of  skilled 
laborers  to  America,  and  forbade  the  export  of 
machinery.  It  used  its  recent  conquest  of  Bengal 


68  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

to  compel  the  peasantry  of  that  country  to 
cultivate  the  indigo  plant.  It  thus  ruined  the 
indigo  industry  of  our  Southern  States,  which 
were  forced  to  look  around  for  another  staple  to 
take  its  place,  and  had  almost  decided  upon  cotton. 
By  these  difficulties  Providence  was  forcing  the 
American  people  to  lay  aside  their  colonialism, 
and  to  come  together  in  a  more  perfect  union. 
It  was  the  dispute  over  the  Chesapeake  fisheries 
which  furnished  the  occasion,  as  a  meeting  of 
conference  at  the  home  of  George  Washington 
led  to  the  proposal  to  have  a  constitutional 
convention  called  by  the  Continental  Congress. 
When  this  body  actually  met  in  Philadelphia  in 
May,  1787,  the  outlook  was  hopeless  enough. 
The  small  states  wanted  to  continue  the  plan  of 
a  weak  confederation  in  which  every  state  had 
an  equal  vote.  The  large  states  wanted  a  strong 
government  based  directly  on  the  people  of  the 
whole  country,  in  which  states  would  have  a 
weight  proportional  to  their  wealth  and  population. 
Some  preferred  a  centralized  government,  with  a 
single  legislature,  like  the  British  Parliament. 
Others  would  keep  the  state  legislatures  intact, 
and  retain  in  their  hands  nearly  all  the  powers  of 
government.  So  keen  were  the  differences  that 
the  heat  of  discussion  became  intense.  Some 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  69 

members  withdrew,  and  Franklin  shared  with  many 
others  the  fear  that  the  meeting  of  the  Convention 
had  only  served  to  accentuate  the  differences 
which  divided  the  mind  of  the  country. 

It  was  under  these  circumstances  that  Franklin 
made  the  memorable  speech  which  has  been  already 
quoted  in  part.  The  whole,  as  recorded  in  Mr. 
Madison's  "  Papers,"  is  worth  repeating  here  : 

"  Mr.  President :  The  small  progress  we  have, 
made  after  four  or  five  weeks'  close  attendance  and 
continual  reasonings  with  each  other, — our  different 
sentiments  on  almost  every  question,  several  of  the 
last  producing  as  many  noes  as  ayes, — is,  methinks, 
a  melancholy  proof  of  the  imperfection  of  human  un- 
derstanding. We  indeed  seem  to  feel  our  own  want 
of  political  wisdom,  since  we  have  been  running 
about  in  search  of  it.  We  have  gone  back  to 
ancient  history  for  models  of  government,  and 
examined  the  different  forms  of  those  republics 
which,  having  been  formed  with  the  seeds  of  their 
own  dissolution,  now  no  longer  exist.  And  we  have 
viewed  modern  states  all  round  Europe,  but  find 
none  of  their  constitutions  suitable  to  our  cir- 
cumstances. 

"  In  this  situation  of  this  Assembly,  groping  as  it 
were  in  the  dark  to  find  political  truth,  and  scarce 
able  to  distinguish  it  when  presented  to  us,  how  has 


70  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

it  happened,  sir,  that  we  have  not  hitherto  once 
thought  of  humbly  applying  to  the  Father  of  lights 
to  illuminate  our  understandings  ?  In  the  beginning 
of  the  contest  with  Great  Britain,  when  we  were 
sensible  of  danger,  we  had  daily  prayer  in  this  room 
for  the  Divine  protection.  Our  prayers,  sir,  were 
heard,  and  they  were  graciously  answered.  All  of 
us  who  were  engaged  in  the  struggle  must  have  ob- 
served frequent  instances  of  a  superintending  Provi- 
dence in  our  favor.  To  that  kind  Providence  we 
owe  this  happy  opportunity  of  consulting  in  peace 
on  the  means  of  establishing  our  future  national 
felicity.  And  have  we  now  forgotten  that  powerful 
friend  ?  Or  do  we  imagine  that  we  no  longer  need 
His  assistance  ?  I  have  lived,  sir,  a  long  time,  and 
the  longer  I  live,  the  more  convincing  proofs  I  see 
of  this  truth, — that  God  governs  in  the  affairs  of  men. 
And  if  a  sparrow  cannot  fall  to  the  ground  without 
His  notice,  is  it  probable  that  an  empire  can  rise 
without  His  aid?  We  have  been  assured,  sir,  in  the 
sacred  writings,  that  '  except  the  Lord  build  the 
house  they  labor  in  vain  that  build  it.'  I  firmly 
believe  this;  and  I  also  believe  that  without  His 
concurring  aid  we  shall  succeed  in  this  political 
building  no  better  than  the  builders  of  Babel.  We 
shall  be  divided  by  our  little  partial  local  interests  ; 
our  projects  will  be  confounded  ;  and  we  ourselves 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  71 

shall  become  a  reproach  and  by  word  down  to  fu- 
ture ages.  And  what  is  worse,  mankind  may  here- 
after, from  this  unfortunate  instance,  despair  of 
establishing  governments  by  human  wisdom,  and 
leave  it  to  chance,  war  and  conquest. 

"  I  therefore  beg  leave  to  move, — that  henceforth 
prayers  imploring  the  assistance  of  Heaven,  and  its 
blessings  on  our  deliberations,  be  held  in  this 
Assembly  every  morning  before  we  proceed  to  busi- 
ness, and  that  one  or  more  of  the  clergy  of  this  city 
be  requested  to  officiate  in  that  service." 

The  motion  was  rejected,  but  not  on  its  merits. 
Many  who  would  have  voted  for  it  if  it  had  been 
offered  at  the  opening  of  the  Convention,  thought 
it  inexpedient  to  make  the  change  at  this  stage  of 
the  proceedings,  as  they  feared  it  would  expose  the 
body  to  ridicule.  But  it  probably  helped  to  the 
graver  consideration  of  the  party  differences,  by 
reminding  members  of  their  responsibility  to  an 
authority  higher  than  their  constituents,  and  of  a 
wisdom  more  profound  than  their  local  preferences 
and  prejudices. 

Out  of  these  disputes  came  the  Constitution  of 
the  United  States,  through  a  compromise  of  oppos- 
ing theories  as  to  what  kind  of  a  government  the 
country  needed  and  would  accept.  Nobody  had  his 
way  in  framing  it,  and  nobody  was  satisfied  with  the 


72  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

result.  The  colonial  party  thought  it  went  much 
too  far  ;  the  national  party  accepted  it  as  the  pro- 
verbial "  half  a  loaf."  Some  refused  to  sign  it,  but 
most  showed  Franklin's  wisdom  by  waiving  their 
objections,  and  remanding  their  fears  to  the 
silence  of  their  own  breasts.  Any  of  them  would 
have  been  astonished  if  they  had  been  told  that 
the  greatest  English  statesman  of  the  coming  cen- 
tury would  declare  it  the  greatest  document  of  its 
kind  that  ever  sprang  from  the  mind  of  man,  and 
that  it  would  prove  the  model  after  which  nearly 
every  free  government  which  was  to  originate  in 
that  century  would  be  fashioned. 

"  They  builded  better  than  they  knew."  This 
despised  compromise  proved  a  new  step  in  the 
development  of  government  organization,  of  hardly 
less  importance  than  the  establishment  of  the 
principle  of  representation  by  the  Teutonic  peoples 
in  the  Middle  Ages.  As  that  made  it  possible  to 
combine  personal  liberty  with  the  extension  of  an 
effective  authority  over  a  whole  nation,  so  this 
made  it  possible  to  combine  local  freedom  of  initia- 
tive and  action  with  adequate  national  authority. 
It  thus  secured  to  the  American  people  the  reten- 
tion of  the  colonial  subdivisions  which  were  identi- 
fied with  the  history  of  the  country,  and  the  crea- 
tion of  similar  institutions  as  the  national  domain 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  73 

extended  and  a  free  population  occupied  it ;  and 
it  yet  established  a  national  authority  as  effective 
for  national  purposes  as  any  in  the  world.  It 
showed  that  centralization  is  not  the  secret  of  effect- 
ive government,  but  a  just  division  of  powers 
between  the  centre  and  the  other  (and  lesser)  points 
of  authority. 

Especially  admirable,  as  Sir  Henry  Sumner  Maine 
points  out,  was  the  security  given  in  the  Constitu- 
tion against  sudden  shifts  of  popular  feeling,  and 
snap  judgments  on  vital  questions.  It  always  pro- 
vides for  an  appeal  "  from  Philip  drunk  to  Philip 
sober,"  from  the  people  carried  away  by  excitement 
to  the  people  in  their  moods  of  reflection.  The 
constitution  of  the  Senate  from  members  chosen 
for  a  long  term  and  not  directly  by  the  people,  the 
veto  power  of  the  President,  the  restriction  on  the 
power  of  amendment,  and  especially  the  authority 
of  the  national  judiciary  as  a  coordinate  power  with 
the  executive  and  the  legislature,  serve  to  this  end. 

Up  to  this  time,  judges  and  courts  had  always 
been  held  to  be  subject  to  the  authority  of  the 
other  branches  of  government,  and  their  highest 
function  was  to  interpret  the  enactments  of  the 
legislature,  or  to  enforce  the  commands  of  the 
executive.  But  the  erection  of  a  body  of  funda- 
mental law  in  written  form,  with  grave  restriction 


74  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

on  its  alteration,  and  the  delegation  from  the  people 
to  the  judiciary  of  the  power  to  interpret  this  law 
with  authority,  involved  the  creation  of  tribunals 
of  a  new  order.  It  gave  the  country  courts  which 
could  efface  a  law  of  Congress  from  the  statute-book 
as  "  unconstitutional,"  or  interpose  an  injunction  to 
prevent  the  executive  itself  from  transgressing  the 
bounds  set  by  the  Constitution  to  its  activity.  It 
is  this  which  makes  the  Supreme  Court  of  the 
United  States  "  the  most  august  tribunal  known  to 
mankind." 

The  new  Constitution  needed  all  the  friends  it 
could  obtain  to  secure  its  adoption  in  the  conven- 
tions called  by  the  several  states  to  ratify  or  reject 
it.  The  degree  of  distrust  it  excited  is  indicated 
by  the  violence  of  passion  which  attended  the  dis- 
cussions. Some  of  the  foremost  in  the  measures 
which  had  led  to  independence,  such  as  Patrick 
Henry  in  Virginia,  were  most  resolute  in  oppo- 
sition. Mr.  Henry  stigmatized  it  a  "  golden  trap," 
into  which  the  states  were  to  be  enticed,  and  he 
warned  Virginia  that  if  she  ventured  into  it,  there 
would  be  no  way  out  of  it.  It  is  noteworthy  that 
Franklin  found  an  analogy  for  this  resistance  of 
the  Anti-federalists  in  the  rebellion  of  the  Children 
of  Israel  against  the  leadership  of  Moses  in  the 
Exodus. 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  75 

It  was  the  economic  necessities  which  operated  to 
force  the  adoption,  as  they  had  caused  the  drafting, 
of  the  Constitution.  The  mercantile  interests  of 
the  country  could  not  maintain  themselves  under  a 
loose  confederation  such  as  that  of  1781,  as  they 
could  not  be  protected  by  commercial  treaties. 
The  workingmen  were  suffering  severely  for  want 
of  employment,  and  were  unable  to  support  them- 
selves and  their  families  at  even  the  low  level  which 
was  then  their  standard  of  living.  It  was  a  delega- 
tion of  workingmen,  led  by  Paul  Revere,  which 
secured  the  support  of  Samuel  Adams  for  the  new 
plan  of  government,  and  thus  went  far  to  secure 
the  approval  of  Massachusetts.  The  other  kind  of 
economic  necessity  was  illustrated  by  New  York, 
which  elected  a  convention  hostile  to  the  Constitu- 
tion, and  yet  gave  it  an  approving  vote,  largely 
through  the  influence  of  Alexander  Hamilton,  who 
showed  them  what  would  be  the  position  of  their 
state  outside  the  Union,  after  the  Constitution  had 
been  adopted  by  the  number  necessary  to  set  it  in 
operation. 

When  the  ship  was  launched,  the  men  were  found 
to  man  her.  The  unanimous  choice  of  the  Amer- 
ican people  called  Washington  to  the  presidency, 
and  for  eight  years  that  high  office  was  filled  by 
one  who  stood  first  among  the  rulers  of  the  century, 


76  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

not  by  dint  of  genius  for  organization  or  adminis- 
tration, but  through  high  principle,  sterling  good 
sense,  and  absolute  fearlessness.  This  last  quality 
was  to  be  as  necessary  to  him  in  civil  as  in  military 
office.  No  act  of  his  military  career  was  as  much 
the  expression  of  his  intrepidity  in  the  discharge  of 
duty,  as  his  signing  Jay's  treaty  with  Great  Britain  ; 
and  no  campaign  of  the  War  for  Independence  re- 
quired finer  generalship  or  greater  firmness,  than 
did  his  handling  of  Citizen  Genet,  who  came  to 
America  with  the  evident  purpose  to  take  charge 
of  the  country,  as  did  the  agents  of  revolutionary 
France  in  the  weaker  nationalities  of  Europe. 
From  first  to  last,  Washington,  the  great  first  Pres- 
ident, was  as  equal  to  the  demands  of  a  most  dif- 
ficult situation,  as  had  been  Washington  the  Gen- 
eral. 

He  was  ably  seconded,  especially  by  Alexander 
Hamilton,  of  whom  Barthold  Niebuhr  said  to 
Francis  Lieber  that  he  was  the  greatest  statesman 
of  his  age.  No  other  man  had  contributed  so  much 
to  effecting  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution,  es- 
pecially through  the  "  Federalist "  papers.  No 
other  was  to  stamp  himself  so  permanently  on  the 
actual  framework  and  policy  of  the  government  for 
which  it  provided.  In  his  own  department — the 
national  Treasury — business  is  still  done  in  the 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  77 

forms  he  devised.  In  his  public  measures  for  the 
assumption  of  the  war-debts  of  the  states  and  the 
establishment  of  a  national  bank,  and  in  his  advo- 
cacy of  a  protective  tariff,  he  indicated  the  lines  on 
which  the  national  policy  was  to  run  in  the  main 
for  a  century  and  more.  Yet  neither  Pennsylvania 
nor  New  York  has  followed  the  example  of  Massa- 
chusetts in  erecting  a  statue  to  his  memory,  while 
many  much  smaller  men  have  been  thus  honored. 
But,  as  Cato  said,  it  is  more  honor  to  have  it  asked 
why  there  is  no  statue,  than  why  there  is  one. 

After  the  eight  years  of  Washington's  presidency, 
the  great  man  bade  farewell  to  public  life,  having 
reached  his  sixty-fifth  year,  and  desiring  to  spend 
his  closing  years  in  those  rural  occupations  for 
which  he  had  so  keen  a  relish.  His  retirement  it- 
self indicated  his  confidence  that  the  government 
was  now  satisfactorily  launched,  and  would  make 
head  against  all  contrary  winds  and  currents.  But 
this  confidence  was  not  so  great  as  to  leave  him 
entirely  free  of  apprehensions.  His  Farewell  Ad- 
dress, prepared  with  the  help  of  Hamilton,  indicates 
his  sense  of  the  peril  the  country  ran  of  being 
drawn  into  the  whirlpool  of  European  disturbances, 
at  a  time  when  England  and  a  coalition  of  Conti- 
nental states  were  seeking  the  overthrow  of  the 
revolutionary  government  of  France. 


78  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

So  violent  were  the  contrary  sympathies  in  this 
country  at  that  time,  that  an  English  traveller  re- 
ported that  he  had  found  a  great  many  English- 
men and  a  great  many  Frenchmen  in  America,  but 
no  Americans !  There  was  an  American  in  the 
presidency,  and  his  final  words  to  his  countrymen 
were  an  exhortation  to  be  Americans  above  all 
things.  He  pointed  them  to  the  future  opening  on 
them  under  their  new  plan  of  government,  and  in- 
vited them  to  believe  in  their  country  as  an  adequate 
object  of  patriotic  interest,  and  to  cherish  those 
mutual  regards  which  alone  would  suffice  to  obliter- 
ate local  jealousies  and  partial  interests,  and  bind 
them  together  in  a  true  national  brotherhood. 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  79 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

EXPANSION  AND  INVENTION. 

THE  shift  of  power  in  1801,  from  the  party  of 
Washington  to  that  of  Jefferson,  seemed  a  fatal  step 
to  many  good  people,  and  probably  so  to  the  major- 
ity of  the  earnestly  religious  element  of  the  nation. 
Jefferson,  in  their  view,  was  not  only  the  representa- 
tive of  French  irreligion,  but  the  patron  of  theories 
and  tendencies  which  must  lead  to  revolutionary 
violence  and  anarchy.  He  was  the  Robespierre  of 
the  New  World,  and  he  would  abuse  the  powers 
given  him  by  the  Constitution,  to  subvert  religion, 
to  assail  property  and  to  advance  the  most  illiterate- 
of  the  land  to  power. 

This  bugbear  figures  in  various  printed  sermons, 
commentaries  on  the  Apocalypse,  and  pamphlets  of 
the  time.  But  even  men  who  took  a  view  of  Jeffer- 
son based  on  observation  of  his  career  and  study  of 
his  character,  were  distressed  at  the  election  of  such 
an  "unsafe  man,"  supported  by  all  the  most  un- 
desirable people  in  the  country,  and  so  given  to 
theorizing  about  ideal  social  conditions  that  no  one 


8o  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

could  tell  what  he  would  try  to  make  of  the  govern- 
ment. They  were  also  convinced  that  the  Consti- 
tution was  not  yet  past  the  dangers  of  youth,  and 
that  as  "  the  proper  nurse  for  Moses  is  Moses' 
mother,"  so  the  proper  guardian  of  the  new  plan  of 
government  was  the  party  which  was  the  chief  agent 
in  establishing  it. 

Jefferson  and  his  party  did  indeed  come  into 
power  with  a  sufficient  load  of  questionable  theo- 
ries. Their  saying,  "  He  governs  best  who  governs 
least,"  for  instance,  has  all  of  modern  Anarchy  im- 
plicit in  it.  But  actual  responsibility  is  a  fine  cor- 
rective to  theories,  which  flourish  nowhere  so  well 
as  in  parties  permanently  excluded  from  power. 
The  experience  England  has  had  with  Irish  national- 
ist leaders,  whose  defects  of  leadership  she  ascribes 
quite  wrongly  to  defects  of  race,  shows  what  we 
might  have  made  of  the  Jeffersonian  party  if  the 
Federalists  had  been  strong  enough  to  keep  them 
out  of  office  for  half  a  century.  It  was  the  good 
providence  of  God  which  left  the  Adamses  and 
others  of  the  Federalist  party  so  much  to  themselves 
that  by  their  Alien  and  Sedition  Acts,  and  other 
proofs  of  distrust  of  freedom,  they  blundered  them- 
selves out  of  office  and  their  opponents  in.  And 
when  the  change  of  parties  took  place,  there  was 
the  usual  refutation  of  the  partisan  notion  that  one 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  81 

half  of  the  American  people  is  unfit  to  take  charge 
of  the  national  interests.  The  fears  of  Jefferson's 
enemies  were  not  fulfilled,  although  he  made  some 
blunders,  and  showed  by  no  means  the  genius  for 
government  his  friends  had  hoped. 

It  was  the  especial  contention  of  his  party  that 
the  national  government  must  keep  itself  strictly 
within  the  limits  of  power  prescribed  for  it  by  the 
letter  of  the  Constitution  and  its  "  strict  construc- 
tion." It  must  leave  to  the  states  all  the  powers 
not  therein  clearly  granted  it.  But  Jefferson  was 
to  have  his  principles  severely  tried  in  this  respect. 
In  the  very  first  year  of  his  administration  Spain 
re-ceded  the  Province  of  Louisiana  to  France,  after 
having  held  it  since  1763.  This  was  done  by  the 
secret  Convention  of  San  Ildefonso  in  1801  ;  and 
the  public  treaty  at  Amiens,  a  year  later,  which 
terminated  for  a  short  time  the  hostilities  that  had 
devastated  the  European  continent,  seemed  to 
leave  the  French  in  easy  possession  of  the  Missis- 
sippi valley.  Our  American  government  was 
naturally  alafmed  at  the  country  being  thus  shut 
in  between  England  on  the  north  and  France  on 
the  west,  with  disputes  as  to  boundaries  pending 
on  both  frontiers.  Jefferson,  although  the  head  of 
the  party  of  economy  and  peace,  and  that  which  had 
been  accused  of  partiality  for  France,  used  language 


82  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

which  distinctly  pointed  to  war,  unless  the  French 
would  sell  us  Louisiana. 

But  the  situation  was  changed  materially  by  1803, 
when  the  refusal  of  England  to  evacuate  Malta,  in 
accordance  with  the  terms  of  the  treaty  of  Amiens, 
showed  that  a  return  of  hostilities  was  at  hand. 
Napoleon  saw  that  he  could  not  hold  Louisiana 
against  the  British  fleet,  and  therefore  offered  it  to 
our  government  for  $15,000,000.  The  offer  was 
closed  with.  The  purchase  was  completed  just 
twelve  days  before  the  British  minister  left  Paris, 
and  sixteen  before  war  was  declared  by  England. 
By  it  we  got  possession  of  what  are  now  the  States 
of  Louisiana,  Arkansas,  Missouri,  Iowa,  Minnesota, 
most  of  the  Indian  and  Oklahoma  Territories,  Kan- 
sas, Nebraska,  the  Dakotahs,  a  large  part  of  Colo- 
rado and  the  greater  part  of  Wyoming,  besides 
Montana,  and  (some  say)  Oregon  and  Washington. 
The  purchase  certainly  more  than  doubled  the 
national  area,  embracing  as  it  did  at  least  800,000 
square  miles  of  territory,  and  much  of  it  the  most 
fertile  lands  in  North  America,  including  all  of  the 
famous  "  wheat-belt  "  but  the  two  ends. 

The  treaty  of  purchase,  like  the  Jay  treaty  of 
1796,  had  due  regard  to  the  people  of  the  territory. 
It  provided  :  "  The  inhabitants  of  the  ceded  terri- 
tory shall  be  incorporated  in  the  Union  of  the 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  83 

United  States,  and  admitted  as  soon  as  possible, 
according  to  the  principles  of  the  Federal  Constitu- 
tion, to  the  enjoyment  of  all  the  rights,  advantages, 
and  immunities  of  citizens  of  the  United  States, 
and  in  the  mean  time  they  shall  be  maintained  and 
protected  in  the  free  enjoyment  of  their  liberty, 
property,  and  the  religion  they  profess."  It  was 
not  an  addition  of  subjects  to  the  dominion  of  an 
empire  which  Jefferson  accomplished,  but  the 
admission  of  citizens  to  a  free  republic,  and  on 
equal  terms  with  the  citizens  already  possessed  of 
self-government.  In  less  than  nine  years  after  the 
purchase,  the  greater  part  of  these  people  were 
erected  into  the  self-governing  State  of  Louisiana, 
with  the  Code-Napol6on  in  place  of  English  com- 
mon law,  and  their  old  subdivisions  into  parishes 
instead  of  counties.  Their  French  language 
remained  in  use  in  legislative  and  judicial  proced- 
ure, and  has  been  only  slowly,  and  without  any 
compulsion,  superseded  by  English. 

To  this  annexation  they  offered  no  resistance. 
They  would  have  preferred,  no  doubt,  to  have 
remained  under  the  government  of  France,  but 
they  knew  that  to  be  impossible.  It  was  a  choice 
between  admission  on  equal  terms  into  the  Ameri- 
can Republic,  and  incorporation  as  subjects  into  the 
British  Empire.  Between  the  two  alternatives  they 


84  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

could  not  have  hesitated  for  an  instant.  Some  of 
them  grumbled,  but  not  a  hand  and  hardly  a  voice 
was  raised  against  the  establishment  of  our  govern- 
ment. Englishmen  indeed  flattered  themselves 
that  their  rule  would  be  more  acceptable  than  ours, 
and  this  notion  seems  to  have  suggested  the  inva- 
sion of  Louisiana  in  1816.  They  were  undeceived. 
No  assistance  was  given  them  by  the  French-speak- 
ing citizens,  and  the  state  government  cooperated 
heartily  with  General  Jackson  in  his  measures  for  the 
defence  of  New  Orleans,  and  thus  aided  Americans 
in  obtaining  a  victory  which  went  far  to  compen- 
sate the  general  failure  of  our  operations  by  land 
during  the  second  war  with  Great  Britain. 

That  war  had  the  effect  of  bringing  the  national 
and  the  provincial  or  colonial  tendencies  in  our 
political  system  into  clear  view,  and  securing  a  sub- 
stantial victory  for  the  former.  The  bad  repute 
into  which  the  Hartford  Convention  brought  the 
Federalist  party,  causing  its  rapid  extinction  in 
spite  of  its  great  services  to  the  country,  might 
have  been  a  warning  to  Nullificationists  and  Seces- 
sionists of  a  later  day  that  the  growth  of  national 
feeling  had  reached  a  point  at  which  the  mainte- 
nance of  the  Union  was  the  first  postulate  of  Ameri- 
can politics.  It  showed  that  no  party  which  sub- 
jected itself  to  a  charge  of  disloyalty  to  the  Nation 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  85 

would  be  able  to  hold  its  own  in  the  suffrages  of 
the  American  people. 

President  Jefferson  earned  the  gratitude  of  Amer- 
icans for  all  time  by  the  good  sense  with  which  he 
let  theories  of  national  power  stand  aside  when  he 
made  this  purchase,  which  secured  us  the  Mississippi 
and  all  its  tributaries.  But  he  Jhad  great  searchings 
of  heart  over  the  constitutionality  of  the  transac- 
tion, and  proposed  to  Congress  to  amend  the  Con- 
stitution so  as  to  legalize  it.  His  friends  of  the 
"  strict  construction  "  party  were  in  control  of  both 
House  and  Senate,  but  they  did  not  act  on  his  sug- 
gestion. They  took  for  granted  that  the  purchase 
was  all  right — as  the  Supreme  Court  afterwards 
decided  it  was — and  that  no  amendment  could 
make  it  right  if  it  were  not. 

The  opposition  to  the  purchase  came  from  his 
opponents,  the  Federalists,  especially  those  of  the 
New  England  States.  They  objected  to  the  clauses 
which  provided  for  the  erection  of  the  newly  ac- 
quired territory  into  states  of  the  Union,  as  this 
would  involve  the  shift  of  the  nation's  centre  of 
gravity  westward,  and  would  deprive  New  England 
of  her  proper  weight  in  the  national  councils.  To 
an  annexation  of  territory  and  subjects,  the  oppo- 
nents of  the  Louisiana  Purchase  would  have  had  no 
objections.  It  was  to  Jefferson's  pledge  of  equal 
rights  to  the  annexed  that  they  took  exception. 


86  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

There  must  have  been  some  who  shrank  from 
the  expansion  of  our  national  territory  on  the 
ground  that  it  was  a  simple  impossibility  for  the 
country  to  extend  an  effective  control  over  so  large 
an  area,  although  its  entire  extent  was  very  imper- 
fectly realized  at  that  day.  A  free  government, 
with  sharply  defined  responsibilities  to  the  people 
and  to  the  law,  could  not  bear  rule  over  outlying 
territories  in  the  rough  fashion  used  by  despotisms. 
How  could  our  government  be  responsible  for  dis- 
tricts lying  two  thousand  miles  from  the  seat  of 
government,  even  if  they  were  connected  with  the 
capital  by  highways,  canals,  and  such  other  facili- 
ties for  travel  as  then  existed?  Would  not  the 
country  go  to  pieces  through  its  unwieldy  bulk,  and 
break  up  into  a  number  of  confederacies  in  course 
of  time  ?  Even  as  it  was,  the  magnificent  distances 
of  America  stood  very  much  in  the  way  of  effective 
government.  It  took  months  to  transport  to  Bed- 
ford the  troops  required  to  suppress  the  Whiskey 
Insurrection  of  1794.  How  long  would  it  take  to 
gather  forces  needed  to  maintain  peace  and  order 
on  the  upper  waters  of  the  Missouri  ? 

So  even  the  friends  of  the  young  republic  rea- 
soned. Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge,  who  had  planned 
to  lead 'an  ideal  community  to  the  banks  of  the 
Susquehanna  in  President  Washington's  second 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  87 

administration,  and  who  always  defended  our  na- 
tional character  against  English  criticism,  said  in 
1833  :  "  In  fact  the  Union  will  be  shaken  almost  to 
dislocation  whenever  a  very  serious  question  be- 
tween the  states  arises.  The  American  Union  has 
no  centre,  and  it  is  impossible  now  to  make  one. 
The  more  they  extend  their  borders  into  the  In- 
dians' land,  the  weaker  will  the  national  cohesion 
be.  But  I  look  upon  the  states  as  splendid  masses, 
to  be  used,  by  and  by,  in  the  composition  of  two  or 
three  great  governments."  Not  that  he  welcomed 
the  dissolution  of  the  Union.  He  says :  "  The 
possible  destiny  of  the  United  States  of  America — 
as  a  nation  of  a  hundred  millions  of  freemen — 
stretching  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific,  living 
under  the  laws  of  Alfred,  and  speaking  the  language 
of  Shakspeare  and  Milton,  is  an  august  conception. 
Why  should  we  not  wish  to  see  -ft  realized  ?  " 

But  before  Mr.  Coleridge  spoke,  a  way  of  escape 
from  this  difficulty  had  been  prepared  through 
those  inventions  which  have  put  every  part  of  our 
national  area  into  closer  relatipns  with  the  govern- 
mental centre  than  were  the  nearest  in  1805.  First 
came  Robert  Fulton's  steamboat,  the  first  success 
in  that  kind  after  a  century  of  experiments — the 
"  Clermont  "  of  1807.  This  invention  was  to  con- 
vert the  rivers  and  lakes  of  America  into  splendid 


88  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

highways  for  cheap  and  rapid  travel  and  traffic. 
Then  came  Robert  Stephenson's  locomotive,  the 
"  Rocket  "  of  1830,  another  final  success  after  many 
experiments,  including  his  own  in  Northumberland 
in  1816.  This  was  to  supersede  for  America  all 
other  modes  of  land-travel,  to  bind  ocean  to  ocean 
and  state  to  state,  and  to  place  it  in  the  power  of 
the  Nation  to  make  its  authority  tangible  in  every 
part  of  the  land.  Next  came  Samuel  Morse's  mag- 
netic-electric telegraph,  in  1844,  a  third  successful 
outcome  of  prolonged  experiments.  It  brought 
every  important  centre  of  population  into  almost 
immediate  communication  with  Washington,  en- 
abling the  government  to  follow  the  course  of 
events  in  each  as  closely  as  that  in  the  capital  itself. 
Thus,  step  by  step,  the  difficulty  of  maintaining  a 
government  over  three  million  square  miles,  with- 
out granting  an  excessive  discretion  to  officials  or 
weakening  the  responsibility  at  the  centre,  has  been 
overcome.  Centralization  has  ceased  to  be  the  con- 
dition on  which  effective  government  exists,  and 
physical  conditions  have  been  created  which  cor- 
respond to  federalism,  with  its  elastic  liberties  for 
districts  and  localities. 

It  is  anticipating  later  events,  but  it  is  worth 
while  to  observe  how  another  invention  came  to  the 
aid  of  the  Union  at  a  critical  time  in  its  history. 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  89 

Up  to  the  year  1845,  the  grain  crops  of  the  country 
were  reaped  with  the  hand-sickle,  a  laborious  and 
back-breaking  work,  and  one  which  required  the 
presence  of  the  whole  people  of  the  farm  in  the 
grain-field.  In  or  about  that  year*  the  "cradle," 
with  long  and  light  fingers  of  wood  mounted  above 
the  blade  of  the  scythe,  came  into  use,  to  the  great 
alleviation  of  the  farmer's  toil.  But  there  had  been 
on  the  market  for  ten  years  previously  Mr.  McCor- 
mick's  reaper,  which  would  have  done  the  work 
more  expeditiously  and  cheaply  than  the  cradle 
did.  The  American  farmer,  however,  did  not 
believe  in  farming  by  machinery,  and  he  would 
have  none  of  the  reaper.  It  was  brought  to  perfec- 
tion in  1846,  and  five  years  later  it  was  given  a  medal 
at  the  London  Exhibition  of  1851,  but  attracted 
little  attention.  In  1855  the  second  International 


*  The  date  I  have  given  for  the  invention  and  general  use  of 
the  "  cradle  "  is  challenged,  and  it  is  asserted  that  it  was  in  com- 
mon use  before  the  invention  of  the  "  reaper."  I  use  the  author- 
ity of  observant  persons  whose  memory  includes  the  methods 
of  our  agriculture  before  the  war  for  the  Union,  but  will  be 
glad  of  specific  correction,  if  they  are  wrong.  There  was  a 
still  earlier  type  of  cradle  invented  in  Scotland,  made  of  metal 
with  very  much  shorter  "  fingers,"  and  this  was  introduced  into 
America.  But  the  long-fingered  cradle  of  wood  is  quite 
another  contrivance,  and  of  much  greater  practical  value. 


90  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

Exhibition  was  opened  in  Paris,  and  there  the 
reaper  got  its  first  real  opportunity. 

As  in  the  case  of  the  steamboat,  the  locomotive 
and  the  electric  telegraph,  experiments  had  been 
going  on  fora  century  or  less,  with  a  view  to  making 
a  practical  reaper.  The  most  common  idea  was  to 
revolve  a  sharp  edge  of  steel  against  the  grain,  push- 
ing this  ahead  of  the  horses.  This  was  sure  to  be 
blunted  by  the  silex  of  the  wheat-stock  before  it  had 
cut  half  the  field.  Mr.  McCormick's  reaper  was  the 
first  that  was  constructed  on  the  principle  of  a  row  of 
scissors.  At  Paris  in  1855  there  were  fields  of  wheat 
on  the  Emperor's  model  farm  at  Compiegne  await- 
ing the  competitors.  The  American  machine  was 
given  the  first  chance,  whether  from  courtesy  or  cu- 
riosity. When  it  had  cut  its  first  ridge  or  swathe  of 
wheat,  all  the  other  inventors  withdrew  from  the 
competition,  acknowledging  its  superiority. 

This  unqualified  triumph  naturally  attracted 
attention  at  home,  and  during  the  rest  of  the  decade 
the  American  farmer  was  coming  to  use  the  reaper. 
By  the  time  the  war  for  the  Union  broke  upon  the 
land,  it  was  as  well  established  among  our  farm- 
tools — along  with  the  mower  and  the  horse-rake — 
as  were  the  hoe  and  the  spade.  When  the  war  car- 
ried off  the  middle-aged  and  young  men  to  fill  the 
ranks  of  the  army,  the  boys,  women,  and  even  girls 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  91 

mounted  the  driver's  seat  in  the  place  of  those  who 
were  gone.  The  crops  could  not  have  been  gathered 
without  these  new  adjuncts  of  farming,  and  must 
have  rotted  on  the  ground.  More  than  once  I 
remember  to  have  heard  it  said  in  those  years,  that 
the  country  simply  could  not  have  got  on  without 
these  inventions,  in  view  of  the  demand  of  the  army 
for  food,  and  of  foreign  countries  for  our  wheat.  It 
was  a  favorite  saying  with  Mr.  McCormick  that  the 
Democratic  party  and  the  Old  School  Presbyterian 
Church  were  the  two  hoops  which  held  the  Union 
together.  It  was  his  good  fortune  to  have  added  a 
third. 

As  a  Scotch  writer  says,  there  is  a  "  theology  of 
inventions,"  and  our  own  history  illustrates  it. 
These  things  came  just  at  the  moment  when  they 
had  become  indispensable  to  our  national  existence, 
and  they  brought  such  good  to  no  other  country  as 
to  ours.  The  hand  of  God  was  in  them,  and  no  sec- 
ondary causes  should  hide  that  hand  from  us. 


92  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 


CHAPTER  IX. 

THE  HEGEMONY  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

TWENTY  years  after  the  extension  of  the  repub- 
lic to  the  shores  of  the  Pacific  by  the  purchase  of 
Louisiana,  America  had  to  decide  upon  her  rela- 
tions to  the  whole  continent. 

During  the  Peninsular  War,  the  Spanish  colonies 
in  America  began  to  throw  off  the  yoke  of  Spain, 
and  to  declare  themselves  independent  republics. 
Between  1810  and  1823  they  had  so  far  succeeded 
in  this,  that  in  the  latter  year  our  government  ac- 
knowledged their  existence  as  sovereign  states. 
The  Spaniards  had  not  yet  given  up  all  hopes  of 
effecting  a  re-conquest,  and  in  several  parts  of  Cen- 
tral and  South  America  troops  were  still  in  the  field 
for  Ferdinand  VII.  Spain  had  forfeited  all  claim 
to  American  sympathy  by  her  general  treatment  of 
her  American  possessions,  and  by  the  barbarities 
which  characterized  this  war. 

The  Spaniards  were  never  properly  colonists  of 
America,  or  of  any  of  their  foreign  possessions. 
Through  the  expulsion  of  the  Jews  and  the  Moris- 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  93 

cos  from  Spain,  its  population  had  been  reduced  so 
much  as  to  make  it  impossible  to  occupy  America 
with  a  large  force  of  Spaniards.  Nor  was  this  de- 
sired by  the  Spanish  government.  It  looked  upon 
America  chiefly  as  a  source  of  revenue,  and  gave 
especial  attention  to  the  mines  of  silver  and  gold. 
To  work  these  it  had  established  or  tolerated  a  sys- 
tem of  forced  labor,  by  which  the  greater  part  of 
the  young  men  of  the  Indian  villages  throughout 
the  great  Viceroyalty  of  Peru  were  taken  to  the 
mining  districts  for  a  term  of  years,  and  there  com- 
pelled to  carry  on  the  mining  operations  in  the 
rude  and  exhaustive  fashion  of  that  day.  They 
came  back  to  their  villages  worn  out  with  toil,  pre- 
maturely aged,  and  infected  with  the  vices  of  their 
Spanish  masters.  As  a  result  the  Indian  popula- 
tion of  the  Viceroyalty  fell  from  8,000,000  to 
608,912,  between  1575  and  1794.  The  European 
population  of  officials,  soldiers,  priests  and  traders 
was  never  numerically  large  in  any  part  of  the 
Spanish  dominions,  and  it  was  divided  in  feeling  as 
to  the  continuance  of  Spanish  rule.  There  was, 
indeed,  stubborn  resistance  offered  in  every  country 
which  took  part  in  the  change  of  government,  but 
everywhere  except  in  Cuba  the  revolutionists  had 
their  way,  and  they  emerged  from  the  struggle 
with  bitter  resentment  of  the  measures  taken  by 


94 

the  Weylers  of  that  day  to  keep  them  in  their  co- 
lonial dependence  upon  a  government  which  had 
done  so  little  for  them  and  had  exacted  so  much 
from  them. 

Before  this  struggle  on  our  side  of  the  Atlantic 
ended,  the  wars  in  Europe  had  reached  their  con- 
clusion at  Waterloo.  Spain  was  freed  permanently 
from  the  yoke  of  France,  and  in  1823  Ferdi- 
nand VII.  effaced  the  last  trace  of  the  revolution- 
ary period  by  abolishing  the  Constitution  under 
which  his  subjects  had  fought  for  the  liberation  of 
their  country  in  his  absence.  In  this  he  was 
actively  supported  by  the  Holy  Alliance,  a  formal 
compact  of  the  continental  sovereigns  to  maintain 
that  arrangement  of  the  map  of  Europe  which  they 
had  made  at  Vienna,  and  to  uphold  "  legitimate  " 
power  everywhere,  not  excepting  that  of  Turkey 
over  her  Christian  subjects.  Under  the  authority 
of  the  Holy  Alliance,  France  sent  an  army  into 
Spain  to  put  the  Spanish  people  under  the  feet  of 
Ferdinand  VII. ,  the  perjured  king  who  had  sworn 
to  maintain  the  Constitution. 

The  success  of  the  Alliance  in  Spain  itself  natu- 
rally suggested  the  restoration  of  "  legitimate " 
authority  in  the  Spanish  colonies  by  a  similar  ex- 
pedition. Here  their  plans  came  into  collision 
with  British  interests.  Under  the  colonial  regime 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  9$ 

Spain  had  carefully  reserved  to  herself  the  trade  of 
her  colonies,  as  was  indeed  the  policy  of  England 
and  other  European  countries.  The  insurrection 
had  thrown  the  Spanish-American  ports  open  to 
British  commerce,  and  the  reduction  of  the  colonies 
to  obedience  would  mean  the  closing  of  those  ports 
and  the  loss  of  a  large  trade  to  England.  It  was 
in  these  circumstances  that  George  Canning,  the 
Secretary  of  State  for  Foreign  Affairs  under  Lord 
Liverpool's  administration,  suggested  though  Ben- 
jamin Reed,  our  minister  in  London,  to  John 
Quincy  Adams,  our  Secretary  of  State,  that  Amer- 
ica should  interpose  her  veto  to  this  project  of  the 
Holy  Alliance.  Reminding  our  rulers  that  we 
were  "  the  first  power  on  that  (this)  continent,  con- 
fessedly the  leading  power,"  he  asked  if  it  were 
possible  that  we  could  see  "  with  indifference  their 
fate  decided  upon  by  Europe."  "  Has  not  a  new 
epoch  arrived,"  he  said,  "  in  the  relative  position 
of  the  United  States  toward  Europe  which 
Europe  must  acknowledge  ?  Are  the  great  politi- 
cal and  commercial  interests  which  hang  upon  the 
destinies  of  the  new  continent,  to  be  canvassed  and 
adjusted  in  this  hemisphere,  without  the  coop- 
eration, or  even  the  knowledge,  of  the  United 
States  ?  " 

The   proposal   commended    itself    to   President 


96  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

Monroe  and  his  cabinet,  and  in  his  Annual  Message 
to  Congress  of  December,  1823,  the  "  Monroe  Doc- 
trine "  was  formulated  as  follows : 

"  We  owe  it,  therefore,  to  candor  and  to  the  amicable  rela- 
tions existing  between  the  United  States  and  those  Powers  to 
declare  that  we  should  consider  any  attempt  on  their  part  to 
extend  their  system  to  any  portion  of  this  hemisphere  as  danger- 
ous to  our  peace  and  safety.  With  the  existing  colonies  or 
dependencies  of  any  European  Power,  we  have  not  interfered, 
and  shall  not  interfere.  But  with  the  governments  who  have 
declared  their  independence  and  maintained  it,  and  whose  in- 
dependence we  have,  on  great  consideration  and  on  just  princi- 
ples, acknowledged,  we  could  not  view  any  interposition  for  the 
purpose  of  oppressing  them,  or  controlling  in  any  manner  their 
destiny,  by  any  European  Power,  in  any  other  light  than  as 
the  manifestation  of  an  unfriendly  disposition  toward  the 
United  States." 

As  the  part  of  the  President's  Message  which 
deals  with  foreign  affairs  is  the  work  of  the  Secre- 
tary of  State,  these  are  the  words  of  Mr.  Adams, 
and  not  of  Mr.  Monroe  except  by  adoption.  They 
sufficed  for  their  purpose.  Although  our  country 
had  not  come  out  of  the  recent  war  with  Great 
Britain  with  untarnished  glory,  except  on  the  sea, 
the  syndicate  of  nations  composing  the  Holy  Al- 
liance did  not  choose  to  try  issues  with  us.  The 
population  of  the  republic  was  about  10,600,000,  and 
its  condition  was  far  from  prosperous.  Yet  not 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  97 

only  were  the  Spanish  colonies  left  to  work  out 
their  own  destiny,  but  Spain  concluded  a  treaty 
with  us  defining  her  American  territories  as  not  ex- 
tending north  of  the  42nd  parallel. 

By  this  step  America  was  conceded  the  leading 
place  on  the  western  continent,  and  was  allowed  to 
assume  so  much  of  a  protectorate  over  her  sister 
republics,  as  secured  them  from  European  invasion 
and  encroachment.  She  did  not  undertake  to  secure 
them  from  the  other  consequences  of  any  quarrel 
or  even  war  which  they  might  have  with  a  European 
nation,  nor  did  she  assume  any  right  to  interfere  in 
their  domestic  affairs.  But  as  European  govern- 
ments at  that  epoch  were  emphasizing  their  unity 
of  action  in  a  compact  state-system,  America  de- 
clared that  the  western  world  was  not  to  be  drawn 
into  any  relations  with  that  system  which  might 
result  in  an  extension  of  the  power  of  European 
governments  over  American  territory  not  already 
possessed  by  them. 

Mr.  Adams  hoped  to  go  still  farther,  and  to 
establish  an  American  state-system,  through  which 
peace  throughout  the  continent  should  be  secured 
and  intimate  commercial  relations  established.  His 
plans  were  frustrated  through  the  violent  political 
dissensions  of  what  is  called — ironically,  surely — 
"  the  Era  of  Good  Feeling."  Not  even  commercially 


98  THE  HAJMD  OF  GOD 

did  we  profit  by  the  situation  we  had  created,  and 
England  continues  to  reap  the  harvest  of  Canning's 
keen  diplomacy.  We  have  held  the  wolf,  but 
England  has  shorn  the  sheep  ;  and  in  every  part  of 
South  and  Central  America  she  emphasizes  the  part 
played  by  Canning  in  the  matter,  quoting  his  boast : 
"  I  called  the  New  World  into  existence  to  redress 
the  balance  of  the  Old." 

The  benefit  came  to  us  in  the  effect  which  our 
new  responsibility  exercised  on  the  national  char- 
acter. It  aided  the  friends  of  the  Union  to  main- 
tain its  claims  on  every  patriotic  American,  by  the 
view  it  offered  of  evil  consequences  to  the  whole 
continent  if  we  failed  to  uphold  our  unity  as  a 
republic.  It  counteracted  the  commercial  tendency 
in  our  diplomacy,  by  committing  us  to  a  task  from 
which  we  derived  no  commercial  advantage  what- 
ever, and  by  asspciating  that  undertaking  with  the 
national  honor  to  such  a  degree  that  no  American 
calls  the  obligation  in  question. 

With  the  growth  of  the  lust  of  conquest  and  an- 
nexation in  Europe,  our  attitude  towards  European 
aggression  in  the  New  World  has  gained  in  impor- 
tance and  worth.  We  have  run  the  wall  of  fire 
around  the  Brynhild  of  the  West,  through  which  no 
adventurous  Sigurd  will  leap  on  any  errand.  When 
the  third  Napoleon  took  advantage  of  our  Civil 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  99 

War  to  set  up  an  empire  in  Mexico,  the  restoration 
of  the  Union  was  at  once  followed  by  a  demand  for 
the  withdrawal  of  his  troops,  and  that  the  demand 
was  complied  with  showed  that  the  most  ambiti- 
ous sovereign  preferred  the  loss  of  his  prestige  with 
Europe  to  a  collision  with  our  power.  And  when 
the  alarming  growth  of  British  Guiana  threatened 
the  absorption  of  the  republic  of  Venezuela  into  the 
Queen's  dominions,  it  was  in  the  name  of  the 
Monroe  Doctrine  that  we  interposed,  and  obliged 
the  successor  of  Mr.  Canning  to  assent  to  a  peace- 
ful arbitration  of  all  claims.  Whatever  the  merits 
or  defects  of  the  decision,  it  put  a  stop  to  the  proc- 
ess of  absorption,  and  shut  England  permanently 
from  the  coveted  Orinoco.  In  these  things  we  have 
played  an  entirely  unselfish  part  for  the  vindication 
of  American  liberties  and  the  maintenance  of  Amer- 
ican integrity. 

It  has  been  doubted  whether  the  game  is  worth 
the  candle,  since  it  gives  us  no  better  result  than 
the  independence  of  a  number  of  republics,  which 
may  be  free  but  are  not  always  orderly.  Even  the 
countrymen  of  Canning  have  expressed  their  doubts 
of  the  worth  of  that  new  world  which  he  expected 
to  redress  the  inequalities  of  the  old,  and  have  de- 
scribed us  as  playing  the  part  of  the  dog  in  the  man- 
ger, since  we  neither  will  undertake  to  coerce  the 


ioo  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

Spanish  and  Portuguese  of  our  continent  into  "  civ- 
ilized "  methods,  nor  allow  anyone  else  to  do  so. 

It  is  quite  true  that  great  hopes  were  excited  by 
the  republics  to  the  southward,  which  have  not 
been  confirmed  by  later  history  ;  but  those  hopes 
were  unwarranted  by  the  circumstances  which 
attended  the  emancipation  of  those  countries  from 
Spanish  control.  Their  people  had  had  no  experi- 
ence in  self-government,  and  they  are  taking  no 
longer  time  to  learn  that  art,  and  are  making  no 
grosser  blunders  and  creating  no  wilder  disturbance 
in  acquiring  the  lesson,  than  did  our  forefathers. 
It  was  not  at  a  bound  that  the  free  and  self-gov- 
erning peoples  of  Europe  emerged  from  the  condi- 
tion of  serfdom,  and  even  slavery,  into  personal 
liberty.  It  was  not  in  a  day  that  even  our  own 
country  attained  that  degree  of  order  which  we  are 
demanding  of  those  who  started  with  none  of  our 
advantages. 

Spanish  misrule  left  behind  it  a  bitter  inheritance 
of  racial  enmities,  local  antagonisms,  and  strife  of 
classes,  along  with  traditions  of  governmental  dis- 
honesty and  official  peculation,  which  are  not  to 
be  outgrown  in  a  day.  It  left  behind  it  a  vast 
mass  of  ignorance  and  superstition,  on  which 
designing  men  in  both  State  and  Church  have  prac- 
tised for  their  own  advancement,  to  the  injury  of 
the  community. 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  101 

Not  less  undeniable  than  these  evils,  however, 
has  been  the  real  advance  of  our  sister  republics 
toward  stable  and  efficient  government,  and  at  the 
same  time  toward  responsible  liberty.  They  have 
not  advanced  equally,  but  they  all  have  advanced. 
Mexico,  stimulated  to  more  active  patriotism  by  its 
struggle  with  the  French  Empire,  has  been  the 
finest  instance  of  what  a  Spanish-American  country 
can  attain  to  under  good  government,  and  the 
instance  is  the  more  striking  as  the  republic  owes 
so  little  to  European  influence  or  initiative,  and 
has  never  given  her  destinies  into  the  hands  of  a 
ruling  class.  What  Mexico  is  to-day,  the  rest  will 
be  to-morrow.  The  same  forces  are  at  work  in  all 
of  them,  and  their  growth  in  the  direction  of  order 
and  prosperity  proceeds  along  parallel  lines,  such 
as  history  discloses  in  the  development  of  the  cities 
of  the  early  Greek  and  Roman  world. 

Our  own  share  in  this  development  of  our  sister 
rep  ublics  has  been  far  less  than  it  ought  to  have 
been.  First  by  our  indifference,  then  by  our  ag- 
gressions in  the  interest  of  the  extension  of  negro 
slavery,  through  wild  talk  about  our  "  manifest 
destiny "  to  rule  the  whole  continent,  and  more 
recently  through  our  exciting  suspicions  that  we 
may  take  advantage  of  our  power  to  extend  our 
rule  over  them,  we  have  been  kept  at  a  distance 


102  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

from  them  even  commercially.  Our  public  opinion 
has  had  less  weight  with  them  than  that  of  Europe, 
and  they  have  even  refused  our  good  offices  for  the 
maintenance  of  peace  throughout  the  continent, 
because  they  suspected  some  private  ends  in  our 
diplomacy.  If  we  are  to  discharge  the  responsi- 
bility of  our  relations  to  them  in  accordance  with 
the  divine  purpose  in  imposing  it  upon  us,  it  must 
be  through  our  being  kept  above  the  suspicion  of 
wrongful  ambitions.  Never  was  a  nobler  task  laid 
upon  any  country  than  that  of  maintaining  the  free 
and  independent  evolution  of  the  political  life  of 
this  New  World,  and  never  was  a  public  respon- 
sibility bestowed  that  was  more  certain  to  bring 
with  its  faithful  discharge  ample  returns  of  the 
highest  value  to  the  people  who  received  the  trust. 
As  already  said,  the  Monroe  Doctrine  is  criticised 
and  challenged  by  European  publicists,  as  an  ex- 
cess of  authority  which  has  no  warrant  in  interna- 
tional law,  and  as  a  false  policy  in  view  of  the  best 
interests  of  the  continent  itself.  These  criticisms 
are  not  mere  "  academic  "  utterances  of  opinion. 
They  express  the  impatience  which  is  felt  by 
European  countries  with  the  restraints  the  Monroe 
Doctrine  imposes  upon  their  plans  for  annexation 
and  colonization,  driving  them  to  the  unwholesome, 
densely  peopled  and  comparatively  barren  regions 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  103 

of  Africa,  while  the  rich  lands  of  America  are  shut 
to  their  advances.  American  policy,  however,  im- 
poses no  restriction  on  European  immigration  to 
any  part  of  the  New  World,  as  is  shown  by  the 
large  German  and  Italian  settlements  in  South 
America  within  the  last  fifty  years.  It  imposes  no 
restraint  on  the  development  of  any  part  of  the 
continent  by  European  intelligence  and  capital.  It 
deprives  Europe  of  no  basis  of  supply  of  food, 
hides,  wool  and  other  raw  materials,  nor  of  any 
market  for  its  manufactures;  and  experience  has 
shown  that  in  all  the  more  valuable  portions  of  the 
continent,  the  security  to  life  and  property  is  suf- 
ficient to  make  safe  every  kind  of  industrial  activity 
that  Europeans  may  find  it  profitable  to  engage  in. 
If  the  course  of  trade  has  not  been  uninterrupted 
by  wars,  it  is  alleged,  with  much  show  of  truth, 
that  trade,  as  is  usual  with  it,  has  had  its  share  in 
provoking  the  worst  of  these  wars  for  its  own  in- 
terests. 

As  for  the  Monroe  Doctrine  having  no  sanction 
in  international  law,  that  criticism  comes  too  late. 
It  was  accepted  without  protest  by  the  European 
powers,  whose  action  it  blocked  in  1823.  Its  op- 
eration has  been  allowed  by  both  England  and 
France  in  situations  where  neither  their  interests 
nor  their  prestige  were  advanced  by  submission. 


104  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

And  what  the  America  of  1823  laid  down  as  a  prin- 
ciple for  the  public  relations  of  this  continent,  the 
America  of  a  later  date,  with  eight  times  the  pop- 
ulation and  ten  times  the  power  of  1823,  is  not 
likely  to  recede  from. 

Nor  is  it  otherwise  than  desirable  that  we  should 
stand  our  ground.  Central  and  South  America 
have  very  little  to  gain  by  having  their  natural  de- 
velopment interrupted  by  European  aggression, 
and  by  having  ideas  and  methods  alien  to  their 
character  imposed  upon  them  by  force  of  arms.  It 
will  be  time  to  consider  the  desirableness  of  that 
when  these  European  countries  have  a  single 
country  to  show,  in  which  their  conquests  and  col- 
onizations have  been  beneficial  in  any  but  the  most 
superficial  way  to  the  peoples  they  have  deprived 
of  self-government.  Their  own  subjects  have  pros- 
pered as  traders  and  adventurers  in  such  countries, 
but  to  the  conquered  peoples  they  have  carried 
rather  their  vices  than  their  civilization. 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  105 


CHAPTER  X. 

THE  IMMIGRANT. 

AMONG  the  novelties  of  our  national  Constitution 
was  its  requirement  that  a  census  of  the  people 
should  be  taken  every  ten  years,  in  order  that 
membership  of  the  House  of  Representatives,  and 
the  electoral  vote  for  President  and  Vice-President, 
might  be  readjusted  according  to  population.  The 
example  thus  set  has  been  followed  by  European 
countries  generally,  England  taking  her  first  census 
in  1801. 

When  the  figures  of  our  first  census  in  1790  were 
published,  our  government  was  concerned  for  our 
standing  among  the  nations,  and  Jefferson,  as  Secre- 
tary of  State,  wrote  to  our  representatives  at  the 
European  courts  about  it.  He  instructed  them  to 
say  that  the  less  than  four  millions  reported  as  the 
total  of  the  American  people  did  not  correspond  to 
the  actual  number.  The  first  census  had  been 
taken  with  less  thoroughness  than  could  be  wished, 
and  the  next  would  show  a  great  difference. 

The  first  census,  however,  was  shown  by  its  sue- 


106  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

cessors  to  be  as  accurate  as  any.  Even  in  1800  the 
population  had  not  risen  much  above  five  millions, 
nor  had  it  reached  ten  by  1820.  America,  in  the 
important  matter  of  population,  ranked  among  the 
lesser  states  of  the  civilized  world,  and  was  treated 
as  such  in  the  game  of  international  politics.  The 
insolence  of  Napoleon's  Milan  Decree  and  of  the 
British  Orders  in  Council  would  never  have  been 
perpetrated  on  a  power  of  the  first  class. 

The  same  means  that  had  been  used  to  effect  the 
founding  of  the  republic,  was  now  employed  by 
Providence  to  procure  its  enlargement  into  the 
greatest  of  civilized  nations.  European  troubles 
and  disturbances  have  always  inured  to  the  benefit 
of  America  in  this  respect.  The  French  Revolution 
itself  contributed  directly  to  the  augmentation  of 
America. 

The  white  settlers  of  Hayti,  driven  out  by  the 
upset  of  all  social  relations  in  that  island,  made 
their  way  to  Philadelphia,  then  the  seat  of  govern- 
ment and  the  chief  seat  of  culture  in  this  country. 
For  like  reasons,  many  Frenchmen  of  eminence  in 
politics  and  literature  found  a  home  in  that  city. 
A  future  king  of  France  first  taught  his  native  lan- 
guage in  a  girl's  boarding-school,  and  then  sought 
a  quieter  life  in  the  bidding  crowd  of  the  corn-ex- 
change. An  ex-king  of  Spain  made  his  home  at 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  107 

Bordentown  in  New  Jersey,  and  thus  conferred  the 
cant  name  of  "  Spain "  on  that  state.  Many  of 
these  foreigners  were  birds  of  passage,  but  others 
came  to  stay,  casting  in  their  lot  with  a  republic  in 
which  liberty  and  order  were  reconciled,  and  whose 
citizenship  was  open  to  all  comers. 

The  new  emigration  reached  a  more  respectable 
volume  though  the  measures  of  repression  which 
were  employed  in  the  British  islands  and  elsewhere 
to  check  the  growth  of  sympathy  with  the 
revolutionary  party  of  that  time.  From  all  the 
three  "  united  kingdoms,"  and  especially  from 
Ireland  after  the  failure  of  the  "  United  Irishmen's  " 
uprising  of  1798,  there  poured  to  America 
lovers  of  liberty,  who  fled,  as  did  Priestley,  from 
the  Tory  mobs,  or  from  their  patrons  in  the  govern- 
ment. The  return  of  peace  to  Europe  only 
increased  the  numbers,  by  giving  full  rein  to  the 
repressive  policy  both  in  Great  Britain  and  on  the 
Continent.  The  "Six  Acts  "of  1819  reproduced 
in  England  the  policy  of  the  Holy  Alliance  on 
the  Continent ;  and  even  our  former  fierce  critic, 
William  Cobbett,  had  to  take  up  his  residence 
in  America  a  second  time,  and  learn  to  revise  the 
opinions  he  had  formed  of  the  republic,  and 
published  as  "  Peter  Porcupine." 

In    this    way    Providence    again    sifted    Europe 


io8  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

for  the  best  elements  for  the  new  nation.  It  sent 
us  the  men  whose  hopes  for  human  liberty  and 
equality  had  not  been  crushed  by  disaster  and 
defeat,  and  who  were  sometimes  fitter  than  many 
Americans  of  that  day  to  appreciate  the  possibilities 
of  their  adopted  country.  For  among  the  con- 
servative class  of  Americans  there  was  no  welcome 
for  such  radicals  and  progressives  from  Europe. 
After  the  cessation  of  immigration  about  1755, 
there  had  been  a  disposition  to  assume  that  the 
Americans  already  on  the  ground  had  certain 
rights  of  monopoly,  with  which  a  renewal  of 
immigration  would  interfere.  They  were  content 
with  a  little  America,  which  they  could  have  all 
to  themselves.  They  had  small  faith  in  the 
assimilative  powers  of  their  nationality,  and  they 
had  no  desire  to  see  it  enriched  by  new  elements 
from  any  other  quarter.  In  1798  President  Adams 
refused  to  allow  some  of  the  leaders  in  the  Irish 
uprising  of  that  year  to  be  sent  to  this  country 
by  the  British  government,  on  the  ground  that 
America  had  already  sympathizers  enough  with 
French  revolutionary  principles,  and  that  the  Irish  in 
America — who  were  mostly  Presbyterians — were 
too  much  disposed  to  take  France  as  their 
political  model.  As  the  suffrage  in  America  at 
that  time  was  confined  to  property-holders,  there 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  109 

was  room  for  the  opinion  that  a  little  of  the 
French  doctrine  of  equality  would  do  no  harm. 

But  the  pressure  created  by  European  conditions 
was  too  much  for  the  conservatives.  In  spite  of 
them,  Providence  was  sending  the  New  World 
the  means  to  obtain  a  position  very  different  from 
that  which  it  held  during  those  stormy  years  which 
closed  the  eighteenth  century  and  opened  the 
nineteenth. 

If  the  country  had  depended  for  its  growth  on 
the  natural  increase  of  its  population,  it  never 
would  have  become  a  first-class  power,  as  European 
countries,  with  the  exception  of  France,  derive  as 
much  from  natural  growth  as  we  do,  and  they 
always  would  have  kept  themselves  ahead  of  us. 
By  natural  increase  the  population  doubles  in 
about  forty-five  years.  If  that  alone  had  been  our 
dependence,  the  population  of  the  Union  would 
have  reached  15,718,868  in  1880,  and  21,645,032 
at  the  close  of  the  century.  We  should  have  had 
less  than  half  the  population  of  any  of  the  European 
kingdoms  which  rank  as  first-class  powers,  and 
much  less  than  half  the  wealth  of  such  a  kingdom, 
for  it  has  been  the  presence  and  cooperation  of 
vast  numbers  that  have  made  possible  such  a  con- 
quest of  nature's  powers  and  resources  as  has 
taken  place  in  America.  With  every  increase  in 


no  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

the  numbers,  the  standard  of  living  has  risen, 
until  a  country  which  starved  a  quarter-million  of 
Indians,  has  food  and  to  spare  for  three  hundred 
times  as  many  people,  besides  its  exports  of  meat 
and  grain. 

Worse  still,  this  scanty  population  obtained  by 
mere  natural  increase  would  have  been  equally 
divided  between  the  free  and  slave  states,  and  the 
institution  of  negro  slavery  would  have  been  fastened 
upon  this  country  in  perpetuity.  It  was  the  immi- 
grant who  made  America  free,  as  well  as  strong  and 
rich.  He  would  not  make  his  home  in  a  slave  state, 
because  as  a  rule  he  had  to  live  by  his  labor,  and  he 
could  not  compete  with  slaves.  Immigration  poured 
into  America  by  northern  ports,  and  made  its  way 
westward  along  the  parallels  of  latitude,  building  up 
new  free  commonwealths  and  increasing  the 
strength  of  the  old  ones,  until  slavery  was  outvoted, 
first  in  the  House  of  Representatives  and  then,  in 
1859,  in  the  Senate,  and  began  to  feel  that  its  day 
was  over  inside  the  Union.  And  when  the  original 
Americans  of  the  South  tried  to  break  up  the  Union, 
the  immigrant  took  his  full  share  in  showing  them 
that  the  day  for  secession  was  over  also. 

So  far  from  weakening  the  American  sense  of 
nationality,  the  immigrant — as  the  late  Prof.  John- 
ston of  Princeton  says — really  evoked  it  more 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  in 

strongly.  The  early  American  was  colonial  rather 
than  national.  He  was  a  Virginian,  or  a  Pennsylvan- 
ian,  or  a  Massachusetts  man,  before  he  was  an 
American.  These  local  distinctions  were  the  more 
valued  because  they  were  limited  to  a  smaller 
number  than  was  nationality,  and  because  they  were 
associated  with  historical  recollections,  in  which  the 
citizen  or  his  family  had  had  a  part.  The  immigrant 
was  an  American  simply,  from  first  to  last.  It  was 
not  Pennsylvania,  or  Virginia,  or  Massachusetts, 
whose  name  had  been  the  attraction  which  drew 
him  across  the  Atlantic.  He  came  to  America,  to 
a  free  country,  where  "  one  man  was  as  good  as 
another,"  and  where  he  had  a  share  in  governing  it 
that  made  sure  that  he  would  be  oppressed  by  no 
class  interests,  such  as  he  had  felt  the  burden  of  at 
home. 

His  very  lack  of  familiarity  with  the  intricacies  of 
a  federal  government  left  him  free  to  ascribe  every 
advantage  he  enjoyed  to  the  national  government 
at  the  centre.  He  had  no  associations  with  "  states' 
rights  "  or  with  "  state  sovereignty  "  in  any  shape, 
and  he  left  those  things  to  his  American  friends  to 
quarrel  over.  As  his  influence  grew,  these  things 
fell  into  the  background  in  the  states  of  the  North, 
where  he  found  a  home  ;  and  when  the  South  under- 
took  to  make  them  the  controlling  principle  of  na- 


112  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

tional  life,  he   met  this  with  a  stolid   indifference 
which  presaged  his  resistance  to  disunion. 

The  immigrant  also  served  the  country  in  the 
enlargement  of  its  range  of  intellectual  interests. 
For  the  first  third  of  a  century  after  Washington's 
inauguration,  America  was  still  a  sort  of  replica  of 
England,  and  sought  literary  models  in  her  writers. 
Irving,  Bryant,  Cooper,  Halleck  and  the  rest  moved 
within  the  bounds  set  by  English  taste  and  culture, 
generally  reproducing  some  one  Englishman  in  a 
fainter  copy.  But  the  next  generation  went  to 
school  to  France,  Spain,  Italy,  even  Sweden,  and 
above  all  Germany.  Not  a  single  influence,  but 
those  of  all  Europe,  affect  our  thought  and  our  art. 
The  dominance  of  a  single  literature  over  our  own  has 
disappeared,  and  the  freedom  of  movement  which 
comes  of  the  knowledge  of  many  has  taken  its  place. 
In  this  work  the  immigrant  has  played  and  is  still 
playing  a  useful  part.  A  Charles  Follen,  flying  from 
the  Holy  Alliance  and  finding  a  tutor's  place  at  Har- 
vard, not  only  brought  us  the  gymnastic  of  the  Ger- 
man Burschenschaft,  but  infused  a  wider  interest 
in  Germany  and  its  thought.  So  men  like  Rauch, 
Schaff  and  Kapp  brought  us  an  atmosphere  of  Ger- 
man philosophy.  A  single  Italian  infected  a  group 
of  American  scholars  with  the  passion  for  Dante, 
and  added  three  new  worlds  to  our  own. 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  113 

If  I  have  said  more  of  what  the  immigrant  gave 
than  what  he  got,  it  is  because  the  former  is  the 
neglected  side  of  the  matter.  But  the  assimilative 
energy  of  America  was  grandly  displayed  in  the 
transformation  of  these  floods  of  Europeans  into 
citizens.  This  was  the  more  easy  through  the 
removal  of  the  aristocratic  restrictions  on  the  elec- 
tive franchise,  which  was  effected  by  the  Jeffer- 
sonian  party.  During  its  unbroken  control  of  the 
national  government  from  1800  to  1830,  and  its 
tenure  of  official  responsibility  in  most  of  the  states, 
it  had  abolished  the  limitation  of  voting  to  free- 
holders, and  had  established  manhood-suffrage  in 
nearly  every  state  of  the  Union.  At  the  end  of 
five  years'  residence  the  immigrant  might  become  a 
citizen,  and  could  be  chosen  or  appointed  to  any 
office  in  the  land,  except  the  two  highest. 

The  effect  of  this  on  the  man's  personal  respect 
was  immediate  and  impressive,  and  contributory  to 
stability  in  many  directions.  He  was  a  man  now 
as  he  never  had  been  before.  Government,  which 
in  the  Old  World  had  stood  over  against  him  as  an 
alien  force,  and  one  it  was  well  to  avoid,  was  now  a 
thing  in  which  he  had  a  part  and  a  responsibility. 
The  policeman  and  the  soldier  were  no  longer  hos- 
tile powers,  but  citizens  like  himself,  appointed  for 
the  public  service.  The  flag  was  his  flag,  to  be  dis- 


ii4  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

played  on  the  Fourth  of  July  from  his  window  as 
freely  as  from  any  rich  man's  palace  in  the  land. 
The  dualism  of  ruler  and  ruled  vanished  out  of  life, 
out  of  thought.  And  thus  the  great  Republic  took 
many  of  the  most  unlikely  elements  in  Europe  and 
ground  them  into  orderly  and  active  citizens,  full  of 
loyal  attachment  to  the  constituted  authorities  of 
the  land. 

The  younger  generation  underwent  a  still  swifter 
transformation  through  the  public  schools.  They 
learnt  the  history  of  the  country  as  told  by  that 
much  abused  book,  the  school  history,  and  they 
acquired  a  sense  of  what  America  stood  for.  They 
grew  up  with  American  boys  and  acquired  the 
American  point  of  view ;  or  if  they  showed  any 
reluctance  in  this,  their  Old  World  notions  were 
summarily  pummelled  out  of  them.  They  had  it 
impressed  upon  them  that  they  were  in  a  country 
whose  people  loved  it  with  an  intense  devotion, 
and  valued  its  public  order  almost  as  a  divine 
endowment  of  the  land.  The  very  discipline  of 
the  school  showed  them  the  difference  between  the 
Old  World  and  the  New.  They  escaped  the  brutal 
punishments  which  generally  disgraced  European 
school-systems,  and  they  found  in  the  teacher,  not  a 
distant  and  repellant  "  master,"  but  a  kindly  friend, 
who  punished  with  reluctance  and  moderation. 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  115 

Their  self-respect  was  not  crushed  in  them  by  a 
tyrant  of  the  ferule  or  the  "  taws." 

Their  mothers  and  sisters  profited  no  less  by 
residence  in  a  country  which  surpasses  every  other 
in  courtesy  to  women,  and  which  guards  their  rights 
by  law  more  carefully  than  it  does  those  of  the 
other  sex.  The  Irish  woman  had  not  so  much  to 
gain  in  this  respect ;  but  those  from  Great  Britain 
and  the  continent  of  Europe  were  put  in  the  way 
of  many  advances  in  their  condition  by  becoming 
Americans.  Especially,  from  the  time  of  the  revo- 
lution begun  by  Emma  Willard  and  Mary  Lyon, 
they  were  offered  advantages  in  the  matter  of  edu- 
cation, such  as  Europe  did  not  then  afford  to  young 
women. 

The  improved  economic  condition  of  the  laborer 
through  his  immigration  made  it  possible  for  him 
to  profit  by  these  educational  advantages.  At 
home  in  Europe,  it  was  necessary  for  the  whole 
family  to  labor  for  their  support.  In  America,  the 
father  earned  such  wages  that  his  wife  and  the 
younger  children  could  dispense  with  toil.  In 
the  relations  of  capital  and  labor,  indeed,  the  older 
aristocratic  attitude  long  prevailed  even  in  America, 
and  it  was  taken  for  granted  that  in  any  collision 
the  workmen  were  in  the  wrong.  The  laws,  or  at 
least  the  applications  of  English  common  law  by 


u6  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

the  courts,  sustained  this  view.  Men  were  sent  to 
prison  for  the  simple  offence  of  striking  for  higher 
wages  or  shorter  hours,  when  no  violence  had  been 
used  to  either  their  employers  or  the  workmen  who 
had  taken  their  places.  A  strike  was  treated  as  a 
"  conspiracy  in  restraint  of  trade,"  and  as  such,  a 
misdemeanor.  Gradually  a  state  of  opinion  more 
in  harmony  with  republican  ideas  became  dominant ; 
but  the  older  notion  is  by  no  means  extinct. 

A  similar  improvement  in  public  feeling  swept 
away  the  laws  which  permitted  the  imprisonment 
of  insolvent  debtors.  The  man  on  whose  labor  a 
family  depended  for  bread,  might  be  taken  from 
them  and  immured  in  a  prison  for  the  failure  to  pay 
a  trifling  amount ;  and  men  who  stood  with  the 
best  in  church  and  market  showed  no  scruple  in 
using  this  cruel  power.  The  "  rights  of  property  " 
were  a  paramount  consideration,  and  society 
applauded  any  course  which  maintained  them  as  a 
measure  of  social  safety.  The  superior  value  of 
persons  as  compared  with  things  is  an  element  in 
the  republican  creed,  but  the  monarchical  and  aris- 
tocratic tradition  clung  for  a  time  to  the  American 
mind. 

Thus  ran  the  give  and  take  of  America  and  the 
immigrant,  in  which  his  services  have  been  too 
much  overlooked. 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  117 


CHAPTER  XI. 

THE  PROPHETS    OF  REFORM. 

WE  are  beginning  to  do  justice  to  the  Hebrew 
prophets  as  teachers  of  present  duty,  and  not 
merely  or  even  chiefly  predictors  of  things  to  come. 
They  were  men  of  ideals,  who  fought  against  the 
feeble  compromises  of  their  time,  and  insisted  that 
to  do  God's  will  was  the  calling  and  purpose  of  the 
Nation.  They  were  nearly  always  repaid  with 
abuse,  frequently  with  stoning,  and  sometimes  with 
worse  still.  But  they  had  a  sense  of  a  divine  calling 
to  hold  up  the  ideal  standard  of  duty  before  the 
people,  and  to  proclaim  its  obligations  as  infinite 
because  divine. 

No  nation  can  dispense  with  prophets.  They  are 
a  part  of  the  national  outfit  of  a  well  furnished 
people,  as  much  as  police  and  road-makers.  For 
the  greatest  peril  to  a  nation's  life  is  in  the  dry  rot, 
which  comes  with  peace  and  prosperity,  and  which 
undermines  the  public  edifice  before  an  alarm  is 
given.  The  prophet  is  by  profession  an  alarmist, 
who  rouses  the  people  to  the  existence  of  those  un- 


ii8  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

seen  perils  which  more  endanger  the  national  life 
than  do  any  armed  forces  that  might  invade  its  ter- 
ritories. And  no  age  has  been  more  fertile  than 
our  own  in  men  who  have  been  called  and  anointed 
to  this  high  office,  although  few  of  them  have  dis- 
charged it  with  that  regard  to  the  greatness  of  the 
great,  which  makes  the  Hebrew  prophets  the  models 
for  all  time. 

Of  the  prophets  who  have  labored  to  amend  the 
evils  of  social  life  in  America,  the  enemies  of  slavery 
take  precedence  of  all  others.  Their  work  began 
when  the  little  handful  of  German  Quakers,  in  1688, 
sent  up  their  protest  against  man-stealing  from  the 
Germantown  meeting  to  their  Monthly  Meeting, 
which  in  turn  sent  it  on  to  the  Yearly  Meeting. 
There  it  was  pigeon-holed  and  forgotten,  to  be 
fished  out  of  the  dust  of  nearly  two  centuries  in  our 
time,  and  given  to  the  world.  And  that  protest  did 
not  die  out  until  slavery  was  at  an  end.  It  was 
taken  up  by  John  Woolman  and  Anthony  Benezet 
in  the  next  century,  with  the  result  of  banishing 
slave-holding  from  the  Society  of  Friends,  and  of 
fixing  attention  on  the  horrors  of  the  Guinea  slave- 
trade.  As  a  cognate  matter,  the  reforming  spirit 
took  up  the  abuses  practised  upon  poor  emigrants, 
and  the  wrongs  suffered  by  "  redemptioners,"  many 
of  whom  were  kidnapped  by  dishonest  shippers, 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  119 

ahd  sold  into  a  slavery  worse  in  some  respects  than 
that  of  the  negro  slave.  Finally,  the  slave-trade 
was  forbidden,  and  the  bringing  of  "  redemptioners" 
was  stopped  by  the  law. 

Hardly  less  important  to  the  life  of  the  nation 
was  the  Temperance  reform,  which  began  in  1825, 
and  went  forward  with  notable  vigor  and  lasting  re- 
sults for  thirty  years  thereafter.  At  the  opening  of 
the  century  it  really  seemed  as  if  the  manhood  of 
America  were  about  to  be  drowned  in  strong  drink. 
The  cheapness  of  untaxed  intoxicants — rum,  whiskey 
and  apple-jack — made  by  anyone  who  chose  to 
undertake  the  business,  and  sold  at  every  gathering 
of  the  people  without  reference  to  the  age  or  sex  of 
the  purchaser,  had  made  drunkenness  almost  uni- 
versal. Samuel  Breck,  at  the  close  of  the  eighteenth 
century  says  that  in  his  time  it  was  impossible  to 
secure  a  servant — white  or  black,  bond  or  free — who 
could  be  depended  upon  to  keep  sober  for  twenty- 
four  hours.  All  classes  and  professions  were 
affected  :  the  judge  was  "  overcome  "  on  the  bench, 
the  minister  sometimes  staggered  on  his  way  to  the 
pulpit.  When  a  church  had  to  be  built,  it  was  cal- 
culated that  the  cost  of  the  rum  needed  would  be 
greater  than  that  of  the  lumber  or  the  labor  em- 
ployed. When  an  ecclesiastical  convention  of  any 
kind  was  to  be  entertained,  it  was  a  question  how 


120  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

much  strong  drink  would  be  required  for  the  rev- 
erend members. 

Almost  from  the  beginning  of  the  century  the 
public  conscience  was  giving  signs  of  concern  about 
this  evil,  but  no  effective  way  of  working  was 
pointed  out  before  1825.  Temperance  societies  in- 
deed were  formed,  such  as  the  one  Albert  Barnes 
established  in  his  first  pastorate  at  Morristown, 
which  pledged  its  members  to  confine  their  con- 
sumption to  a  pint  of  apple-jack  a  day,  the  usual 
allowance  being  a  quart !  At  last  Lyman  Beecher 
had  his  soul  stirred  within  him  by  the  sight  of  the 
evil  rum  had  done  in  a  family  of  his  own  congrega- 
tion at  Litchfield,  Conn.  He  wrote  and  delivered 
his  "  Six  Sermons  onlntemperance  "  in  1825,  and  the 
next  year  they  were  printed.  He  had  the  prophet's 
capacity  for  feeling  intensely  the  evils  of  his  people, 
and  his  prophetic  word  found  a  response  everywhere. 
The  stolid  farmers  of  his  parish  were  his  first  con- 
verts to  temperance,  and  his  sermons  went  over  sea, 
after  touching  America,  and  became  the  message 
to  men's  consciences  which  started  the  movement 
in  the  British  islands. 

Within  five  years,  and  purely  through  voluntary 
associations  of  various  kinds,  there  had  been 
effected  a  great  change  in  the  social  habits  of  the 
American  people.  An  opinion  had  been  formed 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  121 

which  stamped  drunkenness  as  sinful  and  shameful ; 
liquor  had  been  banished  from  the  tables  of  all 
earnest  people.  Temptation  was  thus  taken  out  of 
the  way  of  the  young.  As  time  went  on,  sentiment 
hardened  into  a  demand  for  total  abstinence,  and 
about  1836  American  Temperance  became  "tee- 
total." As  yet  the  actual  drunkards  were  left  un- 
heeded for  the  most  part ;  but  the"  Washingtonian  " 
movement,  set  on  foot  by  themselves  in  1840, 
spread  over  the  country  like  a  prairie  fire,  until 
some  600,000  of  this  class  had  signed  the  pledge. 
And  even  if  it  be  true,  as  Mr.  Gough  says,  that  the 
great  majority  of  those  who  had  been  reached  by 
this  excitement,  went  back  to  the  bottle,  still  great 
and  lasting  good  must  have  resulted. 

The  effect  has  been  to  endow  American  opinion 
with  that  wholesome  prejudice  against  intoxicants, 
which  makes  ours  the  most  temperate  of  the  civil- 
ized nations.  This  was  the  more  desirable  as  the 
stimulating  climate  of  America,  and  the  consequent 
nervousness  of  its  people,  render  intoxicating  stim- 
ulants not  only  less  needful  to  health,  but  more 
harmful  to  it.  "  The  whiskey  is  in  the  air  "  of  this 
country,  and  the  rapidly  increasing  consumption  of 
fruits  of  all  kinds  meets  the  craving  which  else- 
where is  met  by  the  use  of  alcohol. 

Parallel  with  the  temperance  reform  was  the  sue- 


122  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

cessful  effort  for  the  suppression  of  legalized  lotter- 
ies, which  flourished  greatly  in  the  first  quarter  of 
the  century.  The  use  of  this  means  for  raising 
money  for  objects  of  general  advantage  was  very 
common  in  the  eighteenth  century.  A  ticket  for  a 
lottery  in  aid  of  a  road,  to  be  constructed  from 
eastern  to  western  Virginia,  has  been  found  with 
the  signature  of  Washington  as  treasurer  of  the  en- 
terprise. The  spire  of  the.  church  he  attended 
during  his  presidency,  had  been  erected  by  a  lot- 
tery. But  especially  the  canals,  which  were  under 
construction  in  great  numbers,  were  allowed  by  the 
legislatures  to  set  up  lotteries,  as  in  other  times 
they  might  have  obtained  a  grant  of  land  or  of 
money.  The  authorizing  acts  indeed  fixed  a  limit 
for  the  extent  of  the  drawings,  but  none  of  them 
ever  seemed  to  reach  this  limit,  and  it  looked  as 
though  they  were  to  go  on  forever. 

The  gambling  temper  was  thus  cherished  and 
fostered  among  the  people  with  the  highest  civil 
sanctions,  and  the  weak-minded  poor  often  laid 
aside  regular  industry  to  try  for  a  living  by  lucky 
guesses  at  the  winning  numbers.  By  wise  agitation 
of  the  question  and  proper  memorials,  the  legisla- 
tures were  brought  to  stop  these  abuses,  and  to  ban- 
ish lotteries  from  the  country. 

Nor  were  the  reformers  indifferent  to  other  forms 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  123 

of  gambling,  which  were  then  plied  much  more 
openly  than  now.  The  palatial  steamboats  on  the 
western  rivers  had  apartments  set  apart  for  games 
of  chance,  and  the  proprietors  levied  tribute  on  the 
professional  gamblers  who  frequented  the  boats  to 
fleece  the  greenhorns.  In  California,  at  the  begin- 
ning of  its  Americanization,  the  gambling  hells 
opened  on  the  streets  as  frankly  as  did  the  shops 
for  the  sale  of  the  necessaries  of  existence.  In 
Washington  the  risks  of  the  gaming-table  were 
treated  as  an  unavoidable  adjunct  of  public  life; 
and  when  the  owner  of  the  most  luxurious  estab- 
lishment of  this  kind  reopened  his  place  after  re- 
pairs and  refitting,  he  invited  the  President  and 
Vice-President,  the  members  of  Congress,  and  many 
highly  placed  officials  of  the  government.  The 
Cabinet  was  represented  on  the  occasion,  and  so 
many  Congressmen  had  gone  to  sample  his  cham- 
pagne that  the  regular  sessions  had  to  be  suspended. 
But  that  was  "  before  the  War." 

The  greatest  of  all  reforms,  as  the  first,  was  the 
opposition  to  the  extension  and  permanence  of 
slavery.  All  the  fathers  of  the  republic  were  op- 
posed to  slavery,  especially  Jefferson,  himself  a 
slave-holder.  Washington  emancipated  his  slaves 
at  his  death.  When  the  Constitution  was  under 
discussion,  slavery  was  disappearing  from  one 


124  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

Northern  state  after  another,  and  the  general  ex- 
pectation was  that  it  would  vanish  from  American 
soil  by  the  act  of  the  slave-holders  themselves.  The 
very  word  was  excluded  from  the  Constitution,  and 
the  periphrasis  by  which  slaves  were  referred  to — 
"  persons  held  to  service  or  labor  " — was  noteworthy 
as  asserting  for  them  just  that  rank  as  persons 
which  their  enslavement  practically  denied,  as  the 
slave  laws  treated  them  as  things  or  chattels,  not  as 
persons. 

Until  about  1830,  the  expectation  was  general, 
even  in  the  South,  that  emancipation  would  not  be 
long  in  coming.  Emancipation  societies  in  that 
section  were  counted  by  the  hundred,  and  they  held 
a  national  convention  to  promote  the  good  work. 
But  suddenly  the  South  seemed  to  change  its  mind, 
and  to  repudiate  the  understanding  which  had 
existed  for  over  forty  years.  The  North  began  to 
hear  first  that  the  black  man  was  not  fit  for  any 
other  condition  than  slavery ;  then  that  the  pros- 
perity of  the  South,  and  indeed  of  the  nation,  was 
bound  up  with  the  existence  of  slavery  ;  and  finally 
that  slavery  was  a  condition  ordained  of  God  for  a 
large  part  of  the  human  race,  according  to  South- 
ern expositors  of  the  Scriptures. 

This  right-about-face  on  the  South's  part  made  a 
great  change  in  the  attitude  of  a  large  body  of  the 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  125 

American  people.  Not  that  there  was  any  unity  of 
opinion  and  action  among  those  who  continued  to 
detest  slavery.  Some  argued  that  under  the  con- 
stitutional law  of  the  country  it  was  a  purely  local 
matter,  and  that  a  Northern  man  was  no  more  re- 
sponsible for  the  condition  of  slaves  in  South  Caro- 
lina or  Mississippi,  than  for  that  of  slaves  in  Cuba 
or  Brazil.  They  would  go  as  far  as  their  constitu- 
tional responsibility  permitted,  as  in  abolishing 
slavery  in  places  directly  controlled  by  the  nation, 
and  in  preventing  the  extension  of  slavery  into  the 
territories,  and  the  acquisition  of  new  slave  states 
by  any  process.  They  made  their  battle  against 
slavery  first  in  opposing  the  annexation  of  Texas, 
and  then  in  the  struggle  which  made  Kansas  a  free 
state. 

The  more  extreme  party  took  the  ground  that 
our  inclusion  within  the  same  national  unity  with 
the  slave  states  made  a  vast  difference  in  our^re- 
sponsibility.  They  denied  the  power  of  any  con- 
stitution to  limit  that,  asserting  that  the  nature  of 
a  nation  and  the  responsibility  of  its  citizens  are 
determined  by  a  much  higher  authority  than  a  con- 
stitutional convention,  or  the  people  voting  to 
ratify  its  work.  And  as  the  American  government 
had  been  constructed  on  the  denial  of  that  higher 
authority  in  this  matter,  they  became  "  political 


126  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

dissenters"  from  the  nation,  refusing  to  vote,  to 
hold  office,  or  to  take  any  oath  of  allegiance  to  it. 

The  strength  of  the  supporters  of  slavery  lay  in 
the  severance  of  these  two  parties,  but  they  took  a 
course  which  was  sure  to  unite  them.  They  used 
their  power  in  Congress,  in  the  executive,  and  in 
the  national  judiciary  to  make  slavery  national. 
They  claimed  for  every  slave-holder  the  right  to 
take  his  slaves  into  every  territory  of  the  United 
States.  They  secured  the  passage  of  a  new  Fugi- 
tive Slave  law,  which  deprived  the  colored  man, 
seized  as  a  fugitive  on  Northern  soil,  of  a  trial  by 
jury  for  his  liberty,  and  sent  him  to  lifelong  slavery 
on  the  single  judgment  of  an  official,  who  got  a  fee 
for  every  slave  he  sent  South,  but  none  for  those 
black  men  he  pronounced  free.  The  same  law  re- 
quired every  citizen  of  the  country,  whatever  his 
opinion  about  slavery,  to  act  .as  a  slave-catcher 
when  called  upon  by  the  officials  appointed  to  en- 
force that  law. 

Then  came  the  decision  of  the  Supreme  Court  in 
the  Dred  Scott  case,  effectually  establishing  slavery 
throughout  the  whole  country,  by  declaring  that 
the  slave-holder's  right  to  his  slave  was  not  impaired 
by  his  taking  him  into  a  free  state  and  keeping  him 
there  for  years ;  and  also  that,  as  the  law  stood,  the 
black  man  had  no  rights  which  the  white  man  was 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  127 

bound  to  respect !  This  policy  was  another 
instance  of  the  judicial  blindness  which  Providence 
inflicts  upon  the  supporters  of  an  evil  cause.  Step 
by  step  the  champions  of  the  system  alienated  the 
sympathies  of  even  the  conservative  classes  at  the 
North,  and  strengthened  the -hands  of  its  enemies. 
Had  the  slave-holding  interest  been  as  cautious 
and  careful  as  in  the  earlier  days  of  the  republic, 
the  overthrow  of  the  institution  might  have  been 
delayed  for  another  century. 

Nor  would  that  overthrow  have  been  so  easy  if 
the  institution  had  been  placed  under  reasonable 
restrictions  by  state  laws.  If  the  slave  had  been 
given  those  permanent  family  relations  which 
the  serfs  of  the  Middle  Ages  enjoyed ;  if  he 
had  not  been  debarred  by  law  from  the  enjoyment 
of  the  smallest  educational  advantages ;  and  if 
cruelty  and  murder  by  his  master  had  been 
punished  by  law  as  in  the  case  of  a  white  man, 
the  continuance  of  slavery  might  have  been  pro- 
longed. But  as  an  actual  social  arrangement, 
slavery  would  not  bear  looking  into ;  and  Mrs. 
Stowe  showed  a  woman's  keen  tact  when  she 
selected  the  "  domestic  slave-trade,"  with  its  rend- 
ing husband  from  wife,  mother  from  child,  as  the 
especial  target  of  criticism  in  her  "  Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin"  (1852).  She  thus  produced  a  much  more 


128  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

powerful  effect  than  did  books  which  depicted 
slavery  in  much  more  lurid  colors,  and  which 
represented  all  planters  as  Legrees. 

More  than  once  it  seemed  as  if  the  anti-slavery 
reform  had  spent  its  force.  Even  Garrison  at 
one  time  diverted  his  Liberator  to  the  discussion 
of  other  questions,  and  talked  as  if  the  cause 
of  emancipation  were  hopeless.  But  always  the 
slave-holders  and  their  friends  came  to  the  rescue, 
arousing  fresh  antagonism  to  the  institution  by 
their  demands  in  its  behalf,  and  making  it  evident 
that  there  could  be  no  bounds  set  to  those  demands 
short  of  either  the  assimilation  of  the  whole  country 
to  Southern  standards,  or  the  erection  of  the 
South  into  an  independent  confederacy.  Lincoln 
put  the  case  with  his  usual  penetration  when  he 
said :  "  A  house  divided  against  itself  cannot 
stand.  I  believe  this  government  cannot  endure 
permanently  half-slave  and  half-free.  It  will 
become  all  one  thing,  or  all  the  other."  "  I  am 
not  unaware  that  this  government  has  endured 
eighty-two  years  half-slave  and  half-free.  I  believe 
it  has  endured  because  during  all  that  time  the 
public  mind  did  rest  in  the  belief  that  slavery  was 
in  course  of  ultimate  extinction." 

The  innovation  came  from  the  South,  which 
about  1830  began  to  proclaim  the  permanence  of 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  129 

slavery.  From  that  time  until  Mr,  Lincoln's 
election,  the  South  used  its  influence  in  Congress 
and  on  the  executive  to  secure  one  measure  after 
another  which  embodied  the  new  purpose  to 
perpetuate  human  bondage  within  the  republic. 
It  thus  forced  even  those  who  were  willing  to  leave 
the  whole  matter  to  the  states,  to  recognize  it 
as  a  national  question ;  and  when  that  point  was 
reached,  the  institution  was  doomed.  It  was 
impossible  to  bring  the  people  of  a  country  not 
directly  and  selfishly  interested  in  slavery,  to 
admit  the  rightfulness  of  treating  and  classifying 
persons  as  "  chattels,"  as  cattle. 


130  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 


CHAPTER  XII. 

A  WAR  AND  ITS  PENALTIES. 

THE  hand  of  God  in  a  nation's  history  may  be 
seen  as  clearly  in  the  penalties  which  fall  upon  it 
for  its  sins,  as  in  any  other  national  experience. 
The  Old  Testament  history  of  the  Hebrew  nation 
is  very  explicit  on  this  point.  While  the  nations 
roundabout  believed  that  their  gods  were  bound, 
by  kinship  to  the  peoples  who  worshipped  them, 
and  by  identification  in  honor  and  dishonor  with 
them,  to  take  their  part  in  any  situation,  the  law- 
giver and  the  prophets  of  the  Hebrews  assert  the 
contrary  in  the  case  of  Jehovah's  relations  to  his 
people.  He  has  entered,  they  say,  into  covenant 
with  them,  and  promises  them  his  all-sufficient  pro- 
tection so  long  as  they  walk  in  his  ways  and  keep 
his  commandments.  But  when  they  cease  to  do 
so,  he,  so  far  from  thinking  their  disasters  a  reflec- 
tion on  himself,  will  himself  bring  those  upon  them. 
The  word  "  IF  "  is  written  over  the  whole  book  of 
the  law  and  the  prophets,  and  the  latter  especially 
rebuke  those  who  talk  as  if  the  Hebrew  nation  were 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  131 

"  the  Temple  of  Jehovah,"  and  could  presume  on 
that  fact  to  do  as  their  lusts  and  ambitions  sug- 
gested. 

In  the  history  of  the  American  republic  there 
are  passages  in  plenty  which  remind  us  of  this  prin- 
ciple. The  Hebrew  "  IF  "  is  written  on  our  history 
also,  and  there  is  no  greater  folly  than  to  suppose 
that  we  have  an  exemption  from  the  penalties 
which  attend  national  wrong-doing.  The  war 
with  Mexico,  and  its  relations  with  the  war  for 
the  Union,  are  an  instance  of  the  reaping  what  was 
sown,  evil  for  evil. 

For  the  first  fifty  years  of  the  American  republic, 
its  relations  with  the  sister  republics  of  the  New 
World  were  thoroughly  beneficent.  The  American 
people  rejoiced  to  see  the  peoples  of  Central  and 
South  America  take  advantage  of  the  disturbances 
of  the  French  Revolution  to  establish  their  own 
freedom,  and  organize  governments  after  the  model 
of  our  own.  When  peace  left  the  Holy  Alliance  of 
European  monarchs  at  leisure,  and  gave  them  the 
chance  to  overthrow  the  liberties  of  Spain,  our 
Monroe  Doctrine  prevented  it  from  extending  its 
malevolent  activity  to  the  New  World  in  the  re- 
duction of  the  Spanish  republics  to  the  rule  of 
Ferdinand  VII.  The  attempt  to  follow  up  that 
great  declaration  by  the  organization  of  a  "  state 


132  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

system  "  for  the  western  continent  was  defeated, 
not  by  any  unwillingness  of  our  sister  republics  to 
enter  into  an  agreement  of  that  kind,  but  by  the 
personal  jealousies  of  what  is  called  our  "  Era  of 
Good  Feeling."  A  chance  was  thus  lost  which 
may  never  return  to  us,  and  its  return  became  all 
the  more  unlikely  through  our  subsequent  attack 
on  the  integrity  of  one  of  those  republics. 

The  Louisiana  Purchase  gave  America  an  outlet 
on  the  Pacific  on  the  northwest,  and  opened  a 
range  of  territory  from  ocean  to  ocean,  which  was 
growing  rapidly  into  free  states,  while  the  west- 
ward advance  of  slavery  was  barred  by  the  position 
held  by  Mexico,  which  then  embraced  what  is  now 
Texas,  New  Mexico,  Arizona,  California,  Nevada, 
Utah,  most  of  Colorado,  and  a  part  of  Kansas.  By 
the  treaty  with  Spain  of  1819,  by  which  Florida 
was  ceded  to  us,  America  accepted  the  Sabine  and 
Red  Rivers  as  her  western  boundary,  and  Spain  ac- 
cepted the  forty-second  parallel  as  her  northern 
boundary.  Soon  after  came  the  independence  of 
Mexico,  with  Texas  as  its  eastern  province,  in  suc- 
cession to  the  rights  possessed  by  Spain ;  and  in 
1829  slavery  was  abolished  throughout  that  country. 

But  an  organized  movement  for  the  settlement 
and  seizure  of  Texas  by  Americans  was  begun  at 
once  after  Mexico  obtained  its  independence  ;  and 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  133 

by  a  grave  oversight  the  Mexicans  at  first  rather 
encouraged  this  by  grants  of  land  in  the  eastern 
part  of  the  state.  By  1830  there  were  30,000 
Americans  settled  there,  and  they  paid  so  little  re- 
spect to  Mexican  law  as  to  carry  negro  slavery 
back  into  the  country  which  had  been  freed  from 
it.  Disagreements  with  the  Mexican  government, 
growing  out  of  differences  between  Mexican  meth- 
ods and  our  own,  and  the  decree  of  President  Santa 
Anna  abolishing  local  self-government  in  the  prov- 
inces of  Mexico,  led  to  collisions,  which  ended  in 
the  Americans  in  Texas  declaring  the  province  in- 
dependent. In  the  war  which  followed,  the  Mex- 
icans behaved  with  great  barbarity.  The  "  out- 
landers  "  of  course  secured  much  sympathy  through- 
out the  South,  which  led  to  companies  of  filibusters 
going  to  their  support.  The  Mexicans  had  the 
worst  of  it,  and  from  1837  to  1845  Texas  was  an  in- 
dependent country,  recognized  as  such  first  by 
America,  and  then  by  France  and  England,  but  not 
by  Mexico.  Slavery  was  now  reestablished  by  con- 
stitutional law,  and  the  original  plan  of  annexing 
the  country  to  the  American  Republic  was  pressed 
by  the  South. 

In  1842  Senator  Calhoun  declared  that  the  annex- 
ation of  Texas  was  essential  to  the  extension  of 
slavery,  and  that  the  extension  of  slavery  was  nee- 


134  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

essary  to  preserve  the  balance  of  power  between 
the  North  and  the  South,  which  in  turn  was  neces- 
sary to  the  maintenance  of  the  Union.  A  year 
earlier  Senator  Webster  had  declared  against  annex- 
ation for  the  reason  that  it  would  extend  slavery 
within  the  Union. 

The  election  of  1844  turned  on  this  question,  and 
President  Folk's  frank  support  of  the  proposal,  as 
contrasted  with  Mr.  Clay's  trying  to  be  on  both 
sides  at  once,  and  thus  dividing  the  opposition,  de- 
termined the  result.  Having  got  so  much,  the  pro- 
slavery  interest  naturally  pressed  for  more.  Even 
the  acquisition  of  Texas  did  not  equalize  the  two 
types  of  industrial  civilization  in  their  prospect  for 
controlling  the  country.  Although  that  is  a 
country  much  bigger  than  France,  it  was  far  smaller 
than  the  area  which  lay  open  to  free  labor  in  the 
northwest.  To  secure  everything  to  the  Pacific 
ocean  was  the  programme  of  the  party. 

As  Mexico  had  acquiesced  in  the  admission  of 
Texas  into  the  Union,  there  was  no  cause  for  war  un- 
less one  could  be  devised,  and  this  was  found  by 
claiming  the  Rio  Grande  river  as  the  western  bound- 
ary of  the  new  accession,  and  opening  fire  upon  a  fort 
which  occupied  part  of  the  intermediate  area — an 
area  never  occupied  by  Texas.  This  was  followed 
by  the  invasion  of  Mexico,  and  the  annexation  of 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  135 

her  northern  provinces  to  the  American  territory. 
If  our  country  had  been  industrially  homogeneous, 
through  that  gradual  extinction  of  slavery  which 
the  founders  of  the  republic  confidently  expected, 
no  such  war  would  have  been  waged  and  no  such 
annexation  sought.  From  the  first  settlement  of 
Texas  by  Americans  to  the  conclusion  of  the  treaty 
with  Mexico,  the  whole  was  done  in  the  interest  of 
the  extension  of  slavery,  and  every  step  taken  by 
our  government  was  a  concession  to  the  pro-slavery 
party. 

The  result,  however,  was  vastly  disappointing  to 
the  party  in  question.  They  soon  found  that 
nothing  that  had  been  acquired  from  Mexico  by 
the  war  was  available  for  the  extension  of  slavery. 
With  the  exception  of  California,  the  annexed 
region  is  arid  and  difficult  to  an  intelligent  agri- 
culture, and  utterly  worthless  to  such  slovenly  till- 
age as  can  be  achieved  by  slave  labor.  Even  Cali- 
fornia slipped  out  of  their  grasp.  Between  our 
military  occupation  of  the  state  and  its  formal 
cession  to  us,  gold  was  discovered  in  such  quantity 
as  drew  thither  a  flood  of  free  settlers,  as  many  as 
80,000  arriving  in  a  single  year.  Less  than  two 
years  after  annexation,  California  made  application 
for  admission  into  the  Union  as  a  free  state;  and 
the  South  received  this  news,  as  also  that  of  the 


136  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

impossibility  of  carving  slave  states  out  of  the  rest 
of  the  new  territory,  in  no  amiable  spirit.  It  was 
with  the  purpose  to  conciliate  the  slave-holding 
interest  at  this  crisis  that  the  new  Fugitive  Slave 
law  was  enacted,  and  that,  in  1854,  the  limit  set  by 
the  Missouri  Compromise  to  the  northward  exten- 
sion of  slavery  was  removed,  and  the  whole  of  our 
western  territory  was  thrown  open  to  its  advances. 
Thus  the  whole  later  relations  of  slavery  to  the 
Nation  took  character  from  the  Mexican  War.  The 
permission  of  such  a  war  on  an  unoffending  republic, 
and  upon  a  pretext  which  afforded  it  no  justification, 
was  a  fatal  step.  It  encouraged  the  slave  power  to 
proceed  in  its  demands,  until  our  national  attitude 
for  the  first  time  became  one  of  entire  unconcern 
as  to  the  difference  between  bondage  and  freedom 
in  the  laborer.  It  fostered  a  temper  in  the  Southern 
States  which  rendered  it  morally  certain  that  they 
would  attempt  the  dissolution  of  the  Union.  Mr. 
Clay  told  Miss  Martineau  that  he  did  not  think  his 
compromise  measures  of  1851 — including  the  new 
law  for  the  rendition  of  fugitive  slaves  without  trial 
— would  avail  to  save  the  Union.  All  he  hoped 
was  to  postpone  the  final  crash  during  his  own  life. 
"  Aprts  moi  la  dtluge  !  "  And  while  the  ruling  class 
of  politicians  seemed  ready  to  concede  anything  for 
the  maintenance  of  the  Union  on  such  terms  as  the 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  137 

South  would  accept,  these  aggressions  of  the  slave 
power  undoubtedly  hardened  Northern  opinion  into 
a  more  general  antagonism  to  slavery,  and  led  to 
the  resolve  to  put  a  stop  to  its  advances  outside 
the  slave  states. 

The  opposition  crystallized  around  the  "  proviso  " 
offered  by  Mr.  Wilmot  of  Pennsylvania  in  1846,  as 
an  amendment  to  the  bill  for  the  establishment  of 
territorial  governments  over  the  territory  acquired 
by  the  Mexican  War.  In  1787  the  Congress  of  the 
Confederacy  had  passed  a  law  for  the  organization 
of  the  Northwest  Territory,  embracing  what  the 
country  then  possessed  north  of  the  Ohio.  It 
enacted  that  "  Slavery  or  involuntary  servitude, 
except  for  crime,"  should  not  exist  in  the  new 
territory.  Mr.  Wilmot  offered  this  as  an  amend- 
ment to  the  bill  in  hand,  and  the  "  Wilmot  Pro- 
viso "  became  the  watchword  of  the  moderate  and 
constitutional  opponents  of  slavery,  who  thus  ap- 
pealed to  the  fathers  of  the  republic.  The  "  pro- 
viso "  was  of  course  voted  down,  but  a  very  large 
part  of  the  American  people  made  up  their  minds 
to  exercise  with  regard  to  all  the  territories  the 
policy  of  1787. 

The  South,  however,  with  the  aid  of  their  friends 
among  the  politicians  of  the  North,  moved  in  the 
opposite  direction.  The  compromise  measure  by 


I38  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

which  Missouri  had  been  admitted  as  a  state  in 
1820,  provided  that  so  much  of  the  Louisiana  Pur- 
chase as  lay  north  of  36°  30'  should  not  be  open  to 
the  establishment  of  slavery.  When  in  1854  the 
question  arose  of  organizing  into  territories  the  part 
of  that  Purchase  which  lay  west  of  Missouri,  as  a  first 
step  to  the  erection  of  new  states,  Senator  Douglas 
secured  the  passage  of  a  bill,  which  did  so  on  the 
basis  of  abolishing  the  compromise  of  1820,  and 
leaving  slavery  free  to  extend  northward,  if  it  could 
not  do  so  westward. 

The  struggle  practically  turned  on  the  possession 
of  the  first  territory  thus  thrown  open  to  the  exten- 
sion of  slavery.  This  was  Kansas,  and  as  it  lay 
entirely  west  of  Missouri,  there  seemed  no  more 
climatic  reason  for  the  one  being  slave  territory 
than  the  other;  while  the  facilities  enjoyed  by  the 
pro-slavery  party  in  Missouri  for  either  settling  the 
territory  by  migration  thither,  or  by  crossing  the 
line  to  vote  in  territorial  elections,  seemed  to 
promise  that  Kansas  would  become  a  slave  state. 
The  national  administration  of  Mr.  James  Buchanan 
gave  the  Missourians  more  than  all  the  support 
that  could  be  extended  to  them  within  the  bounds 
of  the  law.  Twice  he  changed  the  governor  of  the 
territory  in  the  vain  hope  of  finding  a  man  who 
would  take  the  responsibility  of  making  Kansas  a 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  139 

slave  state,  the  last  appointed  being  a  Missourian 
and  a  slave-holder. 

Emigration  to  Kansas  set  in  from  both  sections, 
but  the  South  was  speedily  outnumbered.  The 
North  possessed  a  much  greater  population,  and 
one  much  more  mobile,  besides  commanding  greater 
wealth.  It  was  the  first  visible  test  of  the  effective 
worth  of  the  two  systems,  and  slavery  had  the 
worst  of  it.  Kansas  was  peopled  with  genuine  free 
settlers,  and  even  its  Missourian  governor  had  to 
report  that  slavery  had  been  distanced  in  the  strug- 
gle. Meantime  something  like  a  civil  war  had 
raged  for  two  years,  at  least  two  hundred  men  had 
been  killed,  and  millions  of  dollars'  worth  of  prop- 
erty had  been  destroyed. 

Not  a  step  had  been  taken  by  any  political  party 
which  imperilled  the  continuance  of  slavery  in  any 
state  which  chose  to  adopt  it  as  its  industrial  sys- 
tem. Interference  with  it  in  those  states  was  dep- 
recated by  the  political  parties  opposed  to  slavery 
as  unconstitutional  and  therefore  wrong.  But  the 
growth  of  the  free  states  through  immigration,  and 
the  failure  of  the  slave  states  to  secure  a  field  for 
the  westward  extension  of  their  system,  fore- 
shadowed the  day  when  the  South  would  have 
shrunk  into  political  insignificance,  although  it  had 
exercised  more  than  its  share  of  influence  over  the 


140  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

national  government  for  seventy  years.  Such  a  sit- 
uation was  intolerable  to  many  at  the  South,  and  it 
was  they  who  planned  the  dissolution  of  the  Union, 
in  the  hope  of  establishing  a  new  confederacy  of 
"  sovereign  states,  "  to  embrace  not  only  the  South- 
ern and  Border  States,  but  also  to  secure  enough 
of  the  adjacent  free  states  to  make  their  confederacy 
more  important  than  the  Union,  without  imperil- 
ling Southern  supremacy. 

In  the  North,  especially  in  the  great  commercial 
centres,  there  were  many  who  were  ready  for  such 
a  reconstruction.  Commerce  and  the  prophets 
never  have  maintained  friendly  relations,  as  this 
interest  resents  any  agitation  of  the  public  mind 
which  may  disturb  the  markets.  It  was  pretty 
solidly  on  the  side  of  slavery  in  the  decade  before 
the  war  for  the  Union,  although  there  were  noble 
and  high-minded  men  in  business  life,  who  stood  by 
their  faith  in  human  liberty,  and  "  whose  silks  were 
for  sale,  not  their  opinions,"  as  one  Philadelphia 
merchant  wrote  to  his  Southern  customers.  If 
"  Commercialism "  had  controlled  the  public  mind 
of  that  day,  as  it  tried  to  do,  the  South  would  have 
been  given  all  it  wanted,  and  human  bondage  would 
have  extended  over  at  least  half  the  Union. 

When  the  war  came,  a  just  nemesis  befell  the 
commercial  class  who  had  sacrificed  principle  to 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  141 

profits.  It  was  they  who  had  the  monopoly  of 
Southern  trade,  and  it  was  they  to  whom  the 
Southern  planters  owed  the  vast  bulk  of  debts, 
which  were  an  almost  unvarying  feature  of  planta- 
tion economy.  On  them  therefore  fell  the  losses 
which  attended  the  virtual  repudiation  of  those 
debts  on  the  outbreak  of  hostilities  ;  while  those  of 
their  rivals  in  business  who  had  figured  in  the 
"black  lists"  of  the  Southern  newspapers,  escaped 
all  such  losses. 


142  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

THE  PERIL  AND  TRIUMPH  OF  THE   UNION. 

IN  1850-60  there  was  a  very  widespread  impression 
that  the  dissolution  of  the  Union  was  only  a  ques- 
tion of  time.  The  temper  of  the  South  was  growing 
more  sectional  and  less  national  with  every  adminis- 
tration, and  the  sentiment  against  slavery  as  a  per- 
manent feature  of  American  life  was  spreading  in 
spite  of  the  conservatives.  That  the  South  would 
attempt  to  withdraw  at  some  early  date  was  gener- 
ally expected.  The  break-up  of  the  American  na- 
tion was  a  matter  of  such  apparent  certainty  that  it 
affected  our  weight  and  influence  in  international 
affairs.  Had  it  not  been  for  this  expectation,  such 
a  treaty  as  that  between  Sir  Henry  Bulwerand  Mr. 
Clayton  with  regard  to  the  neutralization  of  any 
possible  canal  in  Central  America  for  connecting 
the  two  oceans,  never  would  have  been  ratified, 
even  under  the  pressure  brought  to  bear  by  the 
commercial  class. 

What  was  uncertain  to  every  one  was,  what  the 
American  people  would  do  when  the  critical  mo- 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  143 

ment  arrived.  The  talk  about  "  state  sovereignty" 
and  "  delegated  powers  "  was  so  general,  and  fol- 
lowed so  closely  the  language  of  the  earlier  theo- 
rists on  American  politics,  as  to  obscure  from  obser- 
vation the  growth  of  national  feeling  which  had 
taken  place  during  the  half-century.  As  usual,  the 
noisiest  in  the  debate  were  supposed  to  most 
exactly  represent  the  chief  body  of  opinion  ;  and 
the  Abolitionists  on  the  one  side  and  the  Fire-eaters 
on  the  other  were  both  ready  to  treat  the  Union  as 
a  temporary  compact,  whose  termination  was  rather 
to  be  wished  than  deplored.  Anti-slavery  orators 
talked  Disunion  as  loudly  as  did  Mr.  Yancey  or 
Mr.  Davis.  Mr.  Garrison  loved  to  apply  to  the 
Constitution  the  prediction  of  Isaiah  (Chap,  xxviii, 
v.  18): 

Your  covenant  with  death  shall  be  disannulled, 
And  your  agreement  with  hell  shall  not  stand. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  the  dissolution  of  the 
Union  would  have  been  fatal  to  the  slave-holding 
interest.  It  would  have  given  to  the  slaves  facilities 
for  escape  far  beyond  those  which  irritated  the 
South  into  declaring  that  the  "  federal  compact  " 
had  been  violated,  as  it  would  have  put  everything 
north  of  Mason  and  Dixon's  line,  if  not  of  the  Poto- 
mac, into  the  same  relation  with  slavery  that  Canada 
sustained  before  the  war  for  the  Union.  It  would 


144  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

not  only  have  swept  away  all  legislation  for  the 
return  of  fugitive  slaves,  but  it  would  have  left  the 
Northern  government  in  the  hands  of  men  hostile 
to  slavery,  and  therefore  not  interested  in  prevent- 
ing organized  efforts  for  its  overthrow.  For  this 
and  similar  reasons,  the  merely  anti-slavery  body 
called  Abolitionists,  were  ready  to  welcome  the  dis- 
solution of  the  union  of  states  as  the  best  way  out 
of  their  difficulty  and  that  of  the  country. 

A  wise  Providence,  however,  had  better  things  in 
store  for  the  nation  than  its  dissolution  into  a  num- 
ber of  independent  states  and  loose  confederacies, 
with  all  the  international  jealousies  of  the  European 
"  state  system,"  and  others  of  its  own,  to  deal  with. 
That  better  thing  came  indeed  in  a  terrible  form,  as 
a  judgment  upon  the  nation's  unfaithfulness  in  its 
dealings  both  with  the  slaves,  and  with  a  sister  repub- 
lic, whom  we  had  sacrificed  to  the  interests  of  the 
slave-holders.  It  came  in  the  shape  of  Civil  War, 
prolonged  over  years  of  bloodshed,  suffering  and 
desolation,  until  some  400,000  lives  were  sacrificed 
as  the  purchase  of  national  unity  and  the  liberation 
of  the  bondsman. 

War  came  as  the  alternative  to  passive  acquies- 
cence in  the  dissolution  of  the  Union,  when  at  last 
the  firing  on  Fort  Sumter,  on  the  I2th  of  April,  1861, 
brought  the  American  people  face  to  face  with  the 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  145 

problem  of  their  national  existence.  That  act  of 
war  was  meant  to  "  fire  the  Southern  heart,"  and  to 
precipitate  into  the  Secession  movement  others  than 
the  six  states  of  the  extreme  South — from  South 
Carolina  to  Louisiana — which  had  already  formed 
the  "  Confederate  States  of  America."  Its  immedi- 
ate result  was  to  "  fire  the  hearts  "  of  the  eighteen 
Northern  States,  which  had  either  abolished  slavery 
or  had  never  tolerated  it  within  their  bounds. 

No  one  who  lived  through  that  day,  even  as  a 
schoolboy,  will  ever  forget  the  change  it  wrought 
on  the  spirit  and  purpose  of  the  Northern  people. 
The  day  before,  all  had  seemed  uncertain,  and  no 
one  knew  what  his  neighbor  would  do,  'or  what  he 
himself  would  do.  All  that  was  positive  was  that 
six  states  had  gone,  and  that  others  were  hesitat- 
ing whether  to  go  or  to  stay.  Outside  his  own 
section  and  his  personal  friends,  the  new  President 
hardly  commanded  confidence.  His  qualities  as 
ruler  and  leader  were  still  uncertain.  So  were  the 
resources  for  meeting  in  military  resistance  the 
states  most  military  in  their  temper,  most  familiar 
with  the  use  of  saddle-horses  and  fire-arms,  and  ap- 
parently more  on  fire  with  the  confidence  of  popular 
enthusiasm.  All  that  had  been  felt  was  the  neces- 
sity of  taking  no  step  that  would  widen  the  range 
of  the  Secession  movement,  by  driving  others  of  the 


146  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

Southern  and  even  the  Border  States  into  the  arms 
of  the  new  confederacy.  This  indeed  had  been  the 
tone  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  Inaugural  Address. 

At  once,  when  the  news  came  that  the  flag  of  the 
Union  had  been  fired  on,  all  reserves,  all  cautions 
were  thrown  to  the  winds.  At  once  the  slowly 
growing  sentiment  of  loyalty  to  the  Union  at  any 
cost,  was  crystallized  into  a  popular  passion  with- 
out parallel  in  American  history.  At  once  the 
North  became  the  resolute  and  impassioned  partner 
to  the  great  controversy,  for  which  the  arbitration 
of  war  had  been  invoked.  The  least  military  of 
peoples  proceeded  to  resolve  itself  into  a  great 
army,  and  all  previous  divisions  among  the  people 
were  buried  under  the  flood  of  Union  sentiment. 
Even  the  Abolitionists  forgot  their  willingness  to 
have  the  South  go,  and  Wendell  Phillips,  for  the 
first  time  in  his  life,  spoke  under  the  flag  and  for 
the  preservation  of  the  Union. 

Such  fervor  could  not  last  for  four  years,  or  for 
one.  It  was  "  mounting  up  on  the  wings  of  an 
eagle,"  which  is  the  first  step  in  every  great  national 
enthusiasm.  The  times  that  try  men's  souls  are 
when  that  first  fervor  has  worn  itself  out,  and  it 
comes  to  "  running  and  not  being  weary,"  and  still 
more  when  even  running  seems  at  an  end,  and  it  is 
a  question  of  "  walking,  and  not  being  faint." 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  147 

Through  those  three  stages,  the  nation  passed  dur- 
ing those  four  years,  the  "  heroic  years  of  American 
history,"  as  Mr.  Lecky  truly  calls  them.  First  it 
v/as  "  On  to  Richmond  !  "  until  we  realized  that 
there  were  in  the  way  men  of  our  own  race  and 
blood,  whom  we  were  fools  to  despise.  Then  it  was 
expected  that  some  great  coup,  by  some  still  undis- 
covered general,  would  bring  the  South  to  its  senses, 
and  thus  end  the  war.  Had  such  an  ending  come 
as  quickly  as  men  wished,  the  real  end  of  the  war 
would  not  have  been  achieved,  for  slavery  would 
have  been  tolerated  within  the  reconstructed  Union. 
Not  until  Union  spelled  Freedom  for  every  human 
being  in  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  land,  did  the 
victory  over  Disunion  come. 

The  hand  of  God  in  the  war  was  visible  enough 
to  those  who,  as  Lord  Chatham  said,  were  "  versed 
in  the  business "  of  the  time.  As  often  has  been 
the  case,  it  was  seen  in  men's  blunders.  In  the 
opinion  of  Von  Moltke,  both  sides  blundered  badly 
at  the  outset,  the  North  alone  in  a  way  which  ad- 
mitted of  retrieval.  The  South,  he  points  out,  had 
the  material  for  extemporizing  an  army,  and  should 
have  struck  at  once.  It  lost  its  chance  through  its 
not  seizing  Washington  before  it  was  fortified,  and 
through  its  not  fighting  its  Antietams  and  its 
Gettysburgs  before  the  North  had  time  to  arm  and 


148  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

drill  its  forces.  The  North  blundered  equally  in 
attacking  the  South  before  it  was  properly  armed, 
drilled  and  fortified.  It  should  have  stood  on  the 
defensive  and  made  its  preparations.  But  Mr. 
Lincoln  had  behind  him  a  democracy,  which  can 
appreciate  anything  more  easily  than  masterly  de- 
lay ;  while  Mr.  Davis  lacked  just  that  very  stimulus 
to  immediate  action,  and  thus  waited  until  raids  on 
Northern  soil  were  too  late. 

While  these  were  the  weaknesses  of  the  two 
forms  of  social  civilization  which  tried  their 
righting  strength  in  those  four  years,  there  was 
another  side  to  the  case.  The  democracy  which 
pressed  Lincoln  forward  to  early  disaster,  was  the 
stronger  of  the  two.  It  had  far  more  staying 
power  under  such  disasters,  and  its  industrial 
resources  and  general  diffusion  of  wealth  made 
the  Northern  cause  sure  of  final  success.  The 
South  was  made  up  of  three  elements  :  planters, 
"  poor  whites  "  and  slaves.  It  was  the  condition 
of  the  second  class  which  was  calamitous  to  the 
Confederacy.  The  existence  of  slavery  and  the 
rareness  of  schools  kept  it  on  a  level  far  below 
even  the  unskilled  laborers  of  the  North.  The 
large  part  of  it,  which  inhabited  the  mountain 
ranges  of  Virginia,  the  Carolinas  and  Tennessee, 
was  unfriendly  to  slavery,  and  took  part  in  the  war 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  149 

with  great  reluctance.  This  alone  constituted  a 
middle  class  in  the  South,  but  was  utterly  unable  to 
compare  with  the  yeomanry  of  Northern  farmers, 
and  the  well-to-do  but  not  wealthy  residents  of 
the  Northern  cities.  The  conditions  slavery  had 
created  were  thus  tested  by  the  fire  of  war,  and 
the  system  condemned  as  one  which  degraded  and 
enfeebled  white  as  well  as  black.  The  conditions 
created  by  a  system  of  free  labor  were  found  the 
more  favorable  in  the  long  run  to  national  strength 
and  warlike  defence.  •  It  was  on  those  two  systems 
that  the  war  passed  judgment. 

Nowhere  in  the  struggle  does  the  hand  of  God 
appear  more  distinctly  than  in  the  men  who  were 
raised  up  to  maintain  the  nation's  cause  in  the  day 
of  its  sorest  need  of  men.  Of  these,  Abraham 
Lincoln  'was  the  most  striking  instance.  He  was 
pitted  against  the  most  able  and  statesmanlike 
of  all  the  Southern  leaders,  who  had  possessed 
every  advantage  and  enjoyed  every  kind  of 
prestige,  not  only  with  the  South  but  before  the 
world.  Mr.  Davis  was  the  child  of  a  wealthy 
planter  family,  and  had  been  trained  in  public  life. 
Mr.  Lincoln  was  the  son  of  a  "  poor  "  and  shiftless 
"  white,"  who  showed  his  best  sense  in  leaving 
Kentucky  for  a  home  in  Illinois.  He  had  been 
to  school  but  six  months  in  his  life.  His  experi- 


150  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

ence  of  public  life  was  limited  to  a  term  in  Congress, 
where  he  most  shone  as  a  story-teller,  and  to 
practising  as  a  lawyer  at  the  Illinois  bar.  The 
news  of  his  nomination  was  received  with  ill- 
concealed  disgust  by  his  own  party  in  the  Eastern 
States,  as  they  would  have  preferred  a  polished 
orator  like  Mr.  Seward,  or  a  picturesque  figure  like 
General  Fre*mont. 

Mr.  Lincoln  was  neither  polished  nor  picturesque, 
and  had  done  nothing  as  yet  to  justify  the 
unbounded  confidence  reposed  in  him  by  his 
immediate  friends.  Even  his  marvellous  skill  and 
moderation  in  the  management  of  his  debate  with 
Mr.  Douglas,  less  impressed  his  contemporaries 
than  it  does  us,  just  as  his  Gettysburg  oration  was 
less  discussed  at  the  time  than  was  Mr.  Everett's 
labored  and  spiritless  performance  on  the  same  day. 
He  was  seen  at  his  best  only  after  men  had  let  him 
grow  upon  them,  and  they  had  had  time  to  forget 
what  was  uncouth  and  grotesque  in  his  manners — 
"  his  lack  of  all  we  prize  as  debonair." 

But  as  surely  as  "  the  Lord  raised  lip  judges, 
which  delivered  the  children  of  Israel  out  of  the 
hand  of  those  that  spoiled  them,"  so  surely  did  God 
raise  up  this  man  for  our  deliverance,  and  train 
him  for  the  work.  He  brought  him  to  New  Orleans 
on  a  flat-boat  in  his  youth,  and  took  him  to  the 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  151 

auction-rooms,  where  he  saw  families  of  slaves  rent 
asunder  at  the  bidding  of  their  masters,  and  there 
inspired  him  with  the  purpose  to  "  hit  slavery  hard  " 
if  ever  he  got  the  chance.  He  trained  him  in  the 
love  of  righteousness  and  fair  play,  by  making  him 
a  lawyer  who  cared  more  for  justice  than  for  fees, 
and  thus  inspired  his  neighbors  with  confidence  in 
"  honest  Abe  Lincoln."  He  gave  him  the  stimulus 
to  opposition  to  slavery  by  pitting  him  against  Mr. 
Douglas,  who  had  torn  down  the  last  barrier  against 
the  extension  of  slavery  into  the  territories  by  the 
repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise.  In  any  other 
state  than  that  which  had  Mr.  Douglas  as  its  repre- 
sentative in  the  national  Senate,  Mr.  Lincoln  might 
have  remained  undistinguished  in  the  great  host  of 
men  who  liked  neither  Slavery  nor  Abolitionism. 

Of  most  significance  was  the  side  of  his  character 
which  turned  toward  God.  He  was  not  always  a 
devout  man,  although  he  always  had  the  grace  to 
seek  to  be  a  just  man.  In  early  life  he  read  and  was 
influenced  by  the  infidel  literature,  which  then  was 
more  plentiful  in  the  West  than  it  now  is.  But  his 
own  reflections  had  brought  him  to  recognize  the 
judgment  of  God  as  the  final  court  of  appeal,  and 
to  that  judgment  he  made  his  appeal  in  his  very 
first  speech  against  Mr.  Douglas's  policy  in  1854. 
When  he  finally  left  Springfield  as  president-elect, 


152  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

he  asked  the  prayers  of  his  neighbors  that  he  might 
be  supported  by  the  same  divine  help  as  Washing- 
ton had  enjoyed,  since  he  was  going  to  take  up  a 
burden  greater  even  than  that  which  Washington 
had  borne.  With  the  passage  of  those  years  of 
anguish  and  hope,  his  utterances  grow  more  distinct 
in  their  recognition  of  God's  presence  and  aid. 
These  are  not  unreal  or  imitative ;  they  indicate 
independent  thought  about  the  matter.  "  Mr. 
Lincoln,  I  am  sure  we  are  going  to  prevail  in  this 
war,  for  we  have  God  on  our  side,"  said  a  zealous 
minister.  "  My  friend,  my  hope  and  wish  is  that 
we  are  on  God's  side,"  was  his  answer. 

His  method  as  a  ruler  was  that  of  patience  and 
leadership,  rather  than  driving  all  before  him,  in 
the  manner  of  Mr.  Carlyle's  heroes.  He  watched 
the  movements  of  public  opinion,  and  guided  them 
to  the  right  ends.  Urged  again  and  again  to  strike 
the  great  blow  at  slavery,  he  refused  until  he  felt 
that  the  public  mind  was  prepared  for  it,  and  it 
would  no  longer  divide  the  supporters  of  the  war. 
The  fact  that  seventeen  governors  of  Northern 
States  at  once  congratulated  him  on  the  step  he 
had  taken,  showed  that  he  had  acted  at  the  right 
moment.  He  was,  as  the  Master  of  Balliol  says, 
the  best  refutation  of  Carlyle's  theory  that  mankind 
are  mostly  fools,  and  that  good  results  are  to  be 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  153 

had  only  by  the  few  heroic  persons  taking  them  in 
hand  to  kick  and  cuff  them  into  right  action.  As 
in  old  Hebraic  and  Homeric  phrase,  he  was  the 
"  shepherd  of  the  people,"  leading  them  by  inspiring 
confidence  and  commanding  their  assent.  He 
stands  out  as  the  greatest  ruler  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  because  the  most  complete  and  successful 
exemplar  of  what  true  government  is.  And  he 
was  so  because  God  raised  him  up  to  do  a  great 
work,  and  trained  him  to  do  it ;  and  because  he  did 
not  resist  the  training. 

As  the  years  went  on,  he  grew  more  and  more 
honored  by  the  whole  people,  through  the  growing 
weight  of  his  utterances,  the  evident  freedom  of  the 
man  from  all  small  spites,  his  devotion  to  his 
country,  and  his  superiority  to  even  the  resentments 
which  too  commonly  attend  such  struggles.  He 
bore  abuse  with  an  outward  patience  which  never 
betrayed  how  sharply  he  was  wounded  by  it.  At 
home  and  abroad,  especially  by  those  English  news- 
papers which  sympathized  with  the  South,  he  was 
grossly  caricatured  and  vilely  misrepresented.  He 
took  it  in  silence.  Through  all  those  trying  years, 
he  uttered  no  word  that  could  hinder  the  reconcilia- 
tion of  South  and  North,  which  he  desired  above  all 
things.  He  always  remembered  that  those  whom 
he  was  fighting  were  to  become  again  attached  and 


154  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

loyal  citizens  of  the  Union,  if  the  fight  was  to  suc- 
ceed in  reality,  and  its  victories  were  not  to  prove 
empty.  He  stood  ready  to  concede  the  most  gen- 
erous terms  to  the  states  which  had  formed  the 
Confederacy — more  generous  than  those  contem- 
plated and  finally  offered  by  his  party  in  the  period 
of  Reconstruction. 

His  second  Inaugural,  after  his  reelection  to  the 
presidency,  showed  by  its  contrast  to  the  first — ex- 
cellent as  that  was  for  its  time  and  purpose — how 
much  the  man  had  grown  in  his  sense  of  the  pres- 
ence of  God's  hand  in  the  struggle  for  the  preser- 
vation of  American  nationality.  Its  most  memorable 
passage  runs : 

"  The  Almighty  has  His  own  purposes.  '  Woe 
unto  the  world  because  of  offences !  for  it  must 
needs  be  that  offences  come  ;  but  woe  to  that  man  by 
whom  the  offence  cometh.'  If  we  shall  suppose 
that  American  slavery  was  one  of  those  offences 
which  in  the  Providence  of  God  must  needs  come, 
but  which,  having  continued  through  His  appointed 
time,  He  now  wills  to  remove,  and  that  He  gives  to 
North  and  South  this  terrible  war,  as  was  due  to 
those  by  whom  the  offence  came,  shall  we  discern 
that  there  is  any  departure  from  those  divine  attri- 
butes which  believers  in  the  living  God  always  as- 
cribe to  Him  ?  Fondly  do  we  hope,  devoutly  do 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  155 

we  pray,  that  this  mighty  scourge  of  war  may  pass 
away  ;  yet  if  it  is  God's  will  that  it  continue  until 
the  wealth  piled  by  bondsmen  by  two  hundred  and 
fifty  years  of  unrequited  toil  shall  be  sunk,  and  until 
every  drop  of  blood  drawn  with  the  lash  shall  be 
paid  with  another  drawn  with  the  sword,  as  was  said 
three  thousand  years  ago,  so  it  must  still  be  said, 
that  '  the  judgments  of  the  Lord  are  true  and 
righteous  altogether.' 

"  With  malice  toward  none,  with  charity  for  all, 
with  firmness  in  the  right,  as  God  gives  us  to  see 
the  right,  let  us  strive  to  finish  the  work  we  are  in, 
to  bind  up  the  Nation's  wounds,  to  care  for  those 
who  shall  have  borne  the  battle,  and  for  his  widow 
and  orphans  ;  to  do  that  which  may  achieve  and 
cherish  a  just  and  lasting  peace  among  ourselves 
and  with  all  Nations." 

After  Lincoln,  the  military  leaders  who  brought 
the  struggle  to  its  successful  close  were  memorable 
instruments  in  the  hand  of  Providence.  At  the 
opening  of  the  struggle  not  one  of  them  was  in 
sight,  except  perhaps  General  Sherman,  and  even 
he  was  discredited  by  his  declarations  that  the  war  we 
had  on  hand  would  last  for  years  and  would  require 
great  armies  to  prosecute  it.  Slowly  and  painfully, 
through  the  survival  of  the  fittest,  the  really  able 
men  emerged  and  were  entrusted  with  command, 


156  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

when  men  without  the  capacity  to  lead  an  army  had 
been  retired  from  that  prominence.  It  is  invidious 
to  name  them,  as  some  are  sure  to  be  overlooked 
in  any  enumeration ;  but  Meade,  Hancock,  Thomas, 
Howard,  Rosecrans,  Sheridan,  Sherman  and  Grant 
are  enough  for  my  purpose,  though  not  enough 
to  fill  the  actual  battle-roll  of  those  great  years. 
Who,  at  the  opening  of  the  struggle,  could  have 
predicted  the  discovery  of  such  and  so  varied  mili- 
tary ability  among  the  citizenry  of  a  republic  the 
least  inclined  to  war  ?  It  was  of  the  providence  of 
God  that  our  armies  found  such  leaders,  while  it 
was  no  less  of  his  providence  that  they  had  to  en- 
counter such  generals  as  Jackson,  Johnston,  Lee  and 
Longstreet,  so  that  the  war  could  not  be  brought  to 
an  end  even  by  them  before  the  appointed  time  had 
come  and  its  proper  results  had  been  secured. 

The  Southern  troops  fought  bravely,  with  all  the 
incentives  which  are  furnished  by  a  conflict  for  the 
possession  of  their  own  ground  ;  but  they  fought 
at  a  great  disadvantage,  which  was  other  than  phys- 
ical or  material.  It  was  but  yesterday  that  they 
had  been  saluting  the  old  Flag,  and  glorying  in 
their  membership  in  the  great  Republic.  They 
could  not  lay  aside  at  a  moment's  notice  their 
attachment  to  what  they  had  honored  and  vener- 
ated. It  was  the  spirit  which  animated  the  citizen 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  157 

soldiery  of  the  North,  that  made  them  finally  victor- 
ious, in  spite  of  their  fighting  on  the  enemy's 
ground,  over  700,000  square  miles  in  extent. 

Such  a  conflict  might  have  ended  in  Southern 
independence,  but  for  the  spiritual  forces  which 
turned  the  scale.  May  we  not  apply  to  the 
whole  conflict  the  language  a  Confederate  soldier, 
who  fought  at  Gettysburg,  applies  to  the  issue  of 
that  decisive  battle  ? 

They  fell  who  lifted  up  a  hand 

And  bade  the  sun  in  heaven  to  stand ; 

They  smote  and  fell,  who  set  the  bars 

Against  the  progress  of  the  stars, 
And  stayed  the  march  of  Mother-land. 

They  stood  who  saw  the  future  come 
On  through  the  fight's  delirium  ; 

They  smote  and  stood,  who  held  the  hope 

Of  nations  on  that  slippery  slope, 
Amid  the  cheers  of  Christendom. 

God  lives  !    He  forged  the  iron  will 
Which  grasped  and  held  that  trembling  hill ; 
God  lives  and  reigns  ;  he  built  and  lent 
Those  heights  for  Freedom's  battlement, 
Where  floats  her  flag  in  triumph  still. 

Fold  up  the  banners,  smelt  the  guns  ; 
Love  rules,  her  mightier  purpose  runs. 

The  mighty  Mother  turns  in  tears 

The  record  of  her  battle  years, 
Lamenting  all  her  fallen  sons. 


158  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

RECONSTRUCTION  AND   GROWTH. 

THE  death  of  President  Lincoln  by  the  hand  of 
an  assassin,  in  the  very  hour  of  national  victory, 
seemed  likely  to  throw  everything  into  confusion. 
But  when  the  first  outburst  of  feeling  was  past, 
and  it  was  seen  that  the  South  had  no  responsibility 
for  that  mad  act,  which  Mr.  Davis  openly  deplored 
as  a  calamity,  then  quieter  moods  prevailed,  and 
the  task  of  restoring  the  Union  was  taken  in  hand. 
It  was  well  for  Lincoln  that  this  task  was  spared 
him,  as  he  certainly  would  have  come  into  conflict 
with  his  own  party  on  the  subject,  as  did  his  suc- 
cessor, President  Johnson,  although  he  probably 
would  have  managed  the  matter  with  more  discretion 
than  did  that  hot-headed  Scotch-Irishman.  As  it 
was,  it  was  his  general  influence  which  was  felt  in 
holding  back  the  victors  from  acts  of  retaliation  on 
persons  who  had  been  prominent  in  the  attempt  to 
divide  the  country.  At  first  there  was  talk  of  an 
extensive  vengeance  on  the  Southern  leaders,  but 
this  never  got  beyond  the  weaker  minds.  Finally, 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  159 

even  Mr.  Davis  went  free,  and  not  one  life  was 
taken,  except  that  of  the  infamous  keeper  of  the 
Andersonville  military  prison,  who  had  done  to 
death  so  many  of  our  soldiers.  It  was  thus  shown 
that  a  democracy  is  capable  of  generosity  and  clem- 
ency. 

The  situation  as  regards  Reconstruction  was 
complicated  by  the  evident  purpose  of  some  of  the 
Southern  people  to  bring  back  their  former  slaves 
into  a  bondage  which  differed  very  little  from 
that  which  the  war  was  thought  to  have  ended. 
Thus  the  "  black  laws  "  of  South  Carolina  and  some 
other  states  required  the  freedman  to  hire  himself 
to  a  v/hV^  master  within  a  specified  number  of  days 
after  the  beginning  of  each  year,  and  directed  the 
sheriff  to  sell  to  the  highest  bidder,  for  the  term  of 
one  year,  those  who  had  failed  to  do  so.  As  the 
proclamation  of  emancipation  had  been  a  war 
measure,  and  as  the  war  was  now  over,  it  of  itself 
gave  no  guarantee  for  the  continued  freedom  of  the 
black  race.  With  the  states  back  in  the  Union, 
and  invested  with  all  their  old  power  for  the  control 
of  local  affairs,  it  was  not  impossible  for  them,  or 
even  difficult,  to  nullify  all  that  had  been  done  for 
the  emancipation  of  their  slaves.  That  it  was  their 
purpose  to  do  this,  was  honestly  inferred  from  the 
passage  of  laws  to  restrain  the  black  laborer,  as 


160  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

such,  in  his  freedom  of  contract  and  the  disposal  of 
his  own  life. 

The  dominant  party's  quarrel  with  the  man  whom 
they  had  made  vice-president,  and  whom  Mr. 
Lincoln's  death  had  raised  to  the  presidency,  had 
had  the  effect  of  dividing  that  party.  Its  leaders 
were  uncertain  as  to  the  result  of  an  appeal  to  the 
people,  since  the  prospect  of  a  speedy  though  un- 
satisfactory settlement  of  all  outstanding  questions 
might  weigh  with  the  voters  more  than  would  the 
rights  of  the  black  man  to  his  newly  acquired  liberty. 
They  therefore  adopted  a  policy  suggested  by  their 
fears  and  based  upon  no  just  estimate  of  the  social 
forces  with  which  they  had  to  deal.  They  jresolved 
to  reconstruct  the  South  on  the  basis  of  negro  suf- 
frage, and  to  admit  no  state  to  its  old  place  in  the 
Union  until  it  had  given  its  assent  to  an  amend- 
ment to  the  national  Constitution  which  established 
this.  Then  if  they  lost  the  support  of  more  North- 
ern states  than  they  even  feared,  they  still  would 
have  that  of  the  states  controlled  by  the  freedmen, 
who  out  of  gratitude  would  stand  by  the  party 
which  had  stood  by  them.  Thus  the  results  of  the 
war  would  be  secured,  even  if  the  cry  for  peace  and 
reconciliation  were  to  influence  the  North  unduly. 

There  were  elements  of  party  selfishness  in   this 
calculation,   but  it  could  not  have  prevailed  had  it 


*      IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  161 

not  been  supported  by  multitudes  of  really  patriotic 
people  who  saw  in  it  the  rightful  solution  of  the 
problem.  Its  fault  was  lack  of  faith  and  lack  of 
knowledge.  It  was  prompted  by  a  timorous  dread 
as  to  the  unwillingness  of  the  American  people  to 
stand  by  the  work  of  the  war  until  the  liberty 
it  had  proclaimed  to  the  black  race  was  secure. 
Faith  in  either  God  or  the  people  would  have  sug- 
gested a  different  course,  but  that  faith  was  wanting 
in  the  statesmen  of  the  Reconstruction  era.  If 
they  had  believed  that  God  was  in  the  war,  as 
Mr.  Lincoln  believed  it,  they  would  not  have  fallen 
into  panic,  or  felt  obliged  to  play  Providence  in 
this  hasty  and  ill-considered  way,  in  order  to  secure 
its  results. 

Nor  was  their  ignorance  of  the  working  of  social 
forces  less  noteworthy  than  their  lack  of  faith.  They 
proposed  to  reconstruct  Southern  society  on  the 
basis  of  its  weakest  elements.  The  negro,  just  set 
free  from  a  bondage  in  which  he  had  been  cared 
for  like  a  domestic  animal  and  kept  almost  as  igno- 
rant as  one,  was  to  be  lifted  at  once  to  the  responsible 
position  of  an  intelligent  voter,  and  invested  with  the 
ballot  as  his  means  of  defence  against  the  encroach- 
ments of  the  class  which  had  the  monopoly  of  educa- 
tion, property  and  political  experience.  The  plan 
worked  after  a  fashion,  so  long  as  the  North  actively 


1 62  THE  HAND  OF  GOD  * 

supported  and  protected  the  state  governments  thus 
established,  without  much  regard  to  constitutional 
restrictions  on  national  activity.  But  the  success  was 
a  scandal.  The  freedman  conducted  himself,  not  un- 
naturally, as  did  the  slaves  of  antiquity  on  the  days  of 
the  Saturnalia  ;  and  the  best  sentiment  of  the  North 
demanded  that  withdrawal  of  national  interference 
in  the  South  which  was  conceded  in  Mr.  Hayes' 
administration.  Then  the  negro  governments 
collapsed,  in  spite  of  their  having  a  numerical 
majority  in  several  states,  and  the  folly  of  such 
reconstruction  was  manifest. 

The  injury  to  the  South  has  been  great,  and  in 
some  respects  lasting.  It  has  led  to  an  antagonism 
between  the  two  races,  such  as  never  existed  before 
the  emancipation  of  the  blacks.  It  was  notorious 
that  the  slave-holder  never  had  the  skin-shrinking 
from  the  black  man,which  was  seen  even  in  Northern 
Abolitionists.  He  generally  had  been  cared  for  by 
a  black  "  mammy."  He  had  played  with  the  black 
children  from  his  infancy,  and  his  English  still 
bears  the  marks  of  the  negro's  influence,  in  its  soft- 
ening of  certain  consonants  and  its  drawling  of  the 
vowels.  Masters  and  slaves  attended  the  same 
church,  and  took  the  communion  from  the  same 
hands,  although  the  seats  for  the  slaves  were  in  the 
gallery.  But  now  all  this  kindliness  of  relation  has 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  163 

disappeared.  Blacks  and  whites  have  different 
churches,  to  the  great  injury  of  the  race  which 
needed  the  refining  and  restraining  influence  of  the 
other.  White  and  black  touch  neither  in  church 
nor  school,  nor  much  in  market.  Contempt  on  the 
one  side  has  evoked  insolence  on  the  other,  and 
thus  has  begun  a  long  duel  of  mutual  injury,  on 
whose  darker  phases  it  is  not  necessary  to  dilate 
here. 

The  white  race,  of  course,  has  been  injured  badly 
through  this  antagonism.  Its  political  morality 
has  been  lowered  by  the  recourse  to  devices  of  all 
kinds  for  getting  rid  of  the  negro  vote ;  and  the 
tricks  thus  played  on  the  freedmen  have  not  been 
forgotten  when  it  is  a  question  of  white  men  trick- 
ing white  men  out  of  a  political  victory.  It  is  not 
wonderful  that  most  of  the  Southern  states  have 
been  seeking,  by  constitutional  devices  of  a  ques- 
tionable kind,  to  put  the  negroes  off  the  list  of  legal 
voters,  in  spite  of  the  Fifteenth  Amendment  to  the 
national  Constitution,  which  is  intended  to  keep 
them  there.  Even  more  demoralizing  to  the  whites 
has  been  the  recourse  to  mob-law  for  the  infliction 
of  cruel  and  illegal  punishments  on  black  men 
charged  with  various  crimes,  but  convicted  of  none, 
through  instituted  courts  of  law.  This  practice  is 
largely  confined  to  negroes  accused  of  outrages  on 


164  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

white  women  and  children  ;  and  the  dreadful  ex- 
ample has  proved  infectious,  as  mob-violence  has 
been  employed  against  black  men  for  that  and  lesser 
offences  in  more  than  one  of  the  Northern  states. 

This  is  the  situation  which  must  be  dealt  with 
vigorously,  unless  we  are  to  see  the  public  order 
undermined,  and  another  sectional  struggle  desolat- 
ing our  country.  Gen.  Sherman,  than  whom  the 
South  had  no  truer  friend,  warned  that  section  that 
he  saw  the  possibility  of  another  civil  war  in  their 
treatment  of  the  black  man.  It  was  especially  their 
exclusion  of  the  colored  people  from  the  right  of 
suffrage  which  he  regarded  as  thus  imperilling  the 
peace  of  the  country.  He  foresaw  a  situation  pos- 
sible in  which  the  choice  of  a  president  might  turn 
on  the  question  whether  the  black  man  had  voted 
or  had  been  shut  out  from  a  share  in  the  choice. 
He  believed  that  the  North  would  not  submit  to  a 
president  thus  chosen  in  defiance  of  the  provisions 
of  the  national  Constitution. 

The  danger,  however,  is  not  limited  to  such  a 
possible  situation.  It  resembles  the  peril  to  the 
Union  from  slavery,  in  that  the  national  conscience 
is  outraged  by  the  denial  of  legal  justice,  which 
is  a  refusal  of  a  natural  right  as  distinct  as  the 
right  to  liberty.  As  before  the  war  for  the  Union, 
we  may,  for  a  time,  quiet  the  people's  conscience 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  165 

by  asserting  that  there  is  a  limit  to  our  responsibil- 
ity in  the  matter.  "  What  have  we  to  do  with  slavery 
in  South  Carolina  or  in  any  other  Southern  state?  " 
it  was  said.  "  We  are  no  more  responsible  for  it 
there,  than  for  its  existence  in  Brazil  or  Mozam- 
bique." But  under  all  this  assertion  lay  an  uneasy 
feeling  that  there  was  a  difference  between  slavery 
tolerated  and  maintained  by  law  within  our  own 
nation,  and  slavery  outside  our  country.  It  was 
felt  that  nationality  constituted  a  bond  of  brother- 
hood with  every  American,  white  or  black,  of 
European  or  of  African  descent. 

Foreign  criticism  aided  to  drive  home  the  respon- 
sibility ;  books  like  Mrs.  Stowe's  sharpened  the 
sense  of  it.  And  while  the  people  at  large  had  not 
reached  the  point  which  would  have  made  it  easy 
for  any  party  to  act  on  this  sense  of  national  respon- 
sibility, it  had  reached  that  in  which  nothing  that 
the  Constitution  did  not  require  could  be  done  for 
slavery.  It  must  disappear  from  the  District  of 
Columbia  and  be  excluded  from  the  territories,  if 
it  must  not  be  touched  in  South  Carolina.  And 
when  the  South  in  resentment  of  this  attitude,  tried 
to  break  up  the  Union,  the  common  feeling  was  that 
the  Secession  movement  had  put  slavery  within  the 
reach  of  the  nation,  and  it  must  perish  on  its  merits, 
as  well  as  from  military  necessity. 


166  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

A  nation,  such  as  slowly  shaped  itself  under 
the  hand  of  God  during  the  Colonial  period,  and 
crystallized  between  1775  and  1789,  is  not  an  arbi- 
trary or  voluntary  organization,  which  men  can  put 
into  any  shape  they  please.  There  is  a  sphere 
within  which  there  is  room  for  choice  on  the  basis 
of  expediency,  between  this  form  of  institution  and 
that.  But  there  are  elements  which  belong  to  the 
very  nature  of  a  nation,  and  which  therefore  cannot 
be  dispensed  with.  One  of  these  is  the  nation's  re- 
sponsibility for  the  natural  rights  of  every  resident 
of  its  territory — citizen  or  alien.  Those  natural 
rights  are  the  rights  essential  to  the  completeness 
of  our  human  nature.  If  any  one  of  them  be  de- 
nied, the  result  is  to  truncate  the  character  of  man. 
They  are  defined  in  the  second  table  of  the  law 
which  God  gave  to  the  chosen  nation  from  the  dark 
cloud  and  amid  the  thunderings  of  Horeb.  That 
law  defines  the  foundations  of  national  life  for  all 
time.  And  the  rights  it  thus  sanctions  are  those  of 
life,  family,  property  and  reputation.  To  these 
every  human  being  has  an  immediate  claim,  and 
the  nation  exists  to  realize  and  secure  them  to  all 
within  its  bounds.  No  constitutional  restrictions 
can  release  it  from  this  primal  responsibility.* 

*  Take  the  parallel  case  of  the  family.  It  is  not  an  arbitrary 
or  voluntary  organization,  to  which  any  shape  you  please  may 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  167 

It  is  the  nation's  duty  to  secure  the  natural 
rights  of  life,  family,  property  and  reputation  to 
the  black  people  of  every  state ;  and  the  national 
conscience,  again  reinforced  by  foreign  criticism, 
is  awakening  to  the  obligation  from  which  consti- 
tutional arrangements  profess  to  have  relieved  us. 

Nor  are  the  black  men  the  only  people  thus 
wronged  by  our  failure  to  do  a  nation's  duty.  We 
have  treaties  of  amity  and  commerce  with  all  the 
Christian  nations  and  many  outside  Christendom, 
which  the  same  constitutional  restriction  prevents 
us  from  executing.  We  promise  the  resident  or 
visiting  citizens  of  these  nations  the  protection  of 
our  laws,  in  return  for  similar  assurances  from 
them  that  our  citizens  travelling  or  residing  with 
them  shall  receive  this  protection.  But  in  several 


be  given  when  you  enter  it.  Many  things  are  open  to  adjust- 
ment this  way  or  that,  but  not  the  things  essential  to  family 
life.  Suppose  that  the  marriage  settlement  provided  that  the 
discipline  and  control  of  the  children  who  might  be  born  of 
this  marriage  should  be  vested,  not  in  their  parents,  but  in 
their  grandparents,  or  their  aunts  or  uncles.  Such  an  arrange- 
ment would  not  stand,  as  it  would  be  contrary  to  the  institu- 
tion of  marriage,  and  would  involve  a  repudiation  of  primal 
obligations.  Civil  law  would  refuse  to  enforce  the  arrangement, 
and  human  conscience  would  approve  the  refusal.  It  is  an 
American  superstition  that  a  Constitution  can  do  anything; 
but  it  can  no  more  alter  the  essential  character  of  national 
obligation  than  a  marriage  settlement  can  alter  the  essential 
character  of  marital  or  parental  obligation. 


168  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

recent  cases  our  government  has  been  obliged  to 
admit  that  it  had  no  power  either  to  protect  alien 
residents,  or  to  punish  those  who  offered  violence  to 
them.  All  it  could  do  was  to  offer  a  handful  of 
money  to  the  families  or  friends  of  those  who  had 
been  put  to  death  without  trial,  as  the  states  would 
not  punish  and  the  nation  could  not.  It  is  as 
though  we  had  got  back  to  the  "  blood-fine  "  as  a 
punishment,  with  the  difference  that  the  country, 
and  not  the  criminals,  pays  the  fine.  Several  of 
these  treaties  terminate  their  existence  by  limita- 
tion of  time  in  the  opening  years  of  the  present 
century.  Will  it  be  surprising  if  they  are  not  re- 
newed ?  And  if  not  Italy,  but  Germany  or  Great 
Britain  had  been  the  injured  party  in  the  outrages 
referred  to,  would  the  matter  have  passed  off  so 
quietly  ?  What  security  have  we  that  it  will  not 
be  one  of  the  strong  and  aggressive  powers  we 
shall  have  on  our  hands  the  next  time  mob-vio- 
lence attacks  a  body  of  aliens  ?  What  then  will  be 
the  value  of  the  precedent  we  are  setting  in  de- 
manding exorbitant  reparation  in  punishment  as 
well  as  cash  from  China  for  the  wrong  done  by  the 
Boxers  ? 

The  extension  of  national  authority  to  the  protec- 
tion of  every  resident  of  the  country  in  the  enjoy- 
ment of  his  natural  rights  seems  to  be  the  point  to 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  169 

which  Providence  is  leading  this  nation  through 
many  circumstances  and  influences.  With  that 
authority,  the  whole  question  of  negro  suffrage 
might  be  left  to  the  several  states,  for  them  to  dis- 
pose of  as  they  please.  The  ballot,  which  was  to 
be  the  freedman's  defence  against  wrong,  has  proved 
worthless  for  any  such  purpose.  It  has  only  widened 
and  deepened  the  gulf  between  him  and  the  white 
race,  and  made  impossible  the  close  and  friendly 
association  with  that  race,  which  is  the  very  first 
condition  of  his  elevation  to  the  highest  level  of 
which  he  is  capable.  He  is  capable  neither  of  de- 
fending himself  nor  of  elevating  himself  to  the 
white  man's  level,  without  help  and  sympathy.  He 
would  welcome  a  change,  which  would  give  him 
something  substantial  in  place  of  a  phantom.  All 
the  conservative  elements  in  the  South  would  wel- 
come it  as  putting  an  end  to  political  and  moral  de- 
moralization, such  as  now  results  from  the  co- 
existence of  the  two  races  under  unhappy  con- 
ditions. And  the  national  conscience  would  wel- 
come it  as  releasing  it  from  the  sense  of  national 
obligations  undischarged,  and  from  outside  criticism 
felt  to  be  deserved. 

What  was  done  in  the  haste  of  unbelief  in  1866- 
70,  must  be  done  over  again,  and  done  in  a  better 
and  more  lasting  fashion. 


i;o  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 


CHAPTER  XV. 

THE  PERILS  OF  PEACE  AND   PROSPERITY. 

THE  war  for  the  Union  was  itself  the  opening  of 
a  new  era  of  industrial  development  for  the  Ameri- 
can people.  At  the  opening  of  the  struggle  Wash- 
ington's warning  was  brought  home  to  the  leaders 
of  our  national  policy,  and  it  was  seen  that  the 
country  must  possess  all  those  industries  which  are 
required  for  the  equipment  and  supply  of  an  army, 
if  it  was  to  be  capable  of  an  adequate  defence.  The 
chance  of  an  interruption  of  commerce  with  Europe, 
through  England  and  France  interfering  in  behalf 
of  the  Confederate  States,  was  very  imminent, 
especially  as  both  countries  suffered  in  their  manu- 
factures through  the  interruption  of  the  cotton  and 
tobacco  trade,  and  as  their  rulers  would  have  viewed 
with  complacency  the  resolution  of  the  "  overgrown  " 
republic  into  a  number  of  more  manageable  confed- 
eracies. It  was  felt  that  for  her  own  safety  America 
must  become  a  self-sufficient  country  ;  and  her  suc- 
cess in  doing  so  was  one  of  the  elements  of  her 
superior  strength  in  the  conflict. 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  171 

The  war  thus  became  the  opening  of  a  period  of 
forty  years  of  national  growth  in  wealth  and  indus- 
trial power,  with  some  sharp  interruptions  in  1873, 
1883  and  1893-96.  During  those  four  decades  the 
accumulated  wealth  of  the  people  rose  from  $14, 
183,000,000  to  $64,120,000,000;  and  the  average  of 
wealth  per  citizen  from  $483  to  $856.  This  increase 
has  naturally  been  attended  by  the  creation  of  many 
great  fortunes,  especially  through  successful  opera- 
tions in  railroading  and  commerce.  But  while 
"  the  rich  have  grown  richer,"  it  is  not  true  that 
"  the  poor  have  grown  poorer,"  for  the  increase  of 
wealth  has  gone  more  to  the  poor  than  to  the  rich. 
The  standard  of  living  has  risen  rapidly  for  the 
laboring  classes,  the  purchasing  power  of  the  wages 
of  1880  being  about  twice  as  great  as  that  of  the 
wages  paid  in  1860,  and  a  similar  increase,  if  not  so 
great,  having  taken  place  since  1880.  The  savings 
accumulated  in  the  savings-banks  are  estimated  as 
being  as  great  as  the  capital  invested  in  manufac- 
tures. 

There  is  nothing  wrong  in  a  nation  growing  rich, 
nor  in  any  man  becoming  more  wealthy  than  his 
fellows.  The  conquest  of  nature,  which  is  the  proc- 
ess by  which  wealth  is  acquired  for  either  man  or 
community,  is  a  duty  enjoined  upon  mankind  at 
the  outset,  when  men  were  bidden  to  "  increase  and 


1/2  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

multiply  and  replenish  the  earth  and  subdue  it." 
It  is  a  divinely  enjoined  service  to  reduce  the 
world's  wildernesses  to  order,  and  to  make  its  re- 
sources for  human  support  accessible  to  the  race. 
It  is  no  less  a  parable  of  that  spiritual  tillage  and 
subjugation,  by  which  "  the  wilderness  and  the  sol- 
itary place  "  are  made  "  glad  "  by  the  kingdom  of 
the  Messiah,  and  the  evil  growths  in  the  human 
heart  and  in  human  society  are  brought  under  con- 
trol and  finally  exterminated.  It  is  only  when 
man's  selfishness  leaves  out  of  sight  the  service  and 
the  use  of  this  great  work,  to  put  personal  profit 
and  advantage  into  the  foremost  place,  that  the 
harm  of  individual  or  collective  wealth  comes  into 
play.  Then  the  perennial  good  of  human  work 
gives  place  to  the  perennial  evil  of  human  greed, 
and  men  begin  to  think  that  life,  after  all  that  has 
been  said  to  the  contrary,  does  consist  in  the  abun- 
dance of  the  things  a  man  possesses,  and  not  in  the 
wholesomeness  of  his  relations  to  his  fellow-men. 

The  rapidity  with  which  America  has  grown  in 
wealth  during  the  last  half-century  has  brought 
this  temptation  home  to  us  as  to  no  other  people  of 
our  time,  and  as  never  before  in  our  history.  It 
would,  however,  be  a  grave  mistake  to  suppose 
that  the  love  of  money  and  of  what  it  will  buy,  is  a 
new  feature  of  American  life,  or  that  the  inhuman- 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  173 

ities  to  which  this  leads  are  without  precedent  in 
our  earlier  history.  A  century  ago  wealth  in  one 
of  its  forms,  the  ownership  of  land,  was  the  test  of 
the  right  to  exercise  the  elective  franchise  in  all 
our  states.  The  existence  of  human  slavery  in  all 
parts  of  the  country,  and  the  numbers  and  wretch- 
edness of  the  white  "  redemptioners,"  were  evi- 
dence that  property  counted  for  more  than  persons. 
Imprisonment  for  debt  was  very  common,  and 
fathers  of  families  were  thus  taken  away  from  the 
support  of  their  children  because  of  their  inability 
to  pay  a  few  dollars  they  had  borrowed  from  a 
richer  neighbor,  and  were  immured  for  months  and 
years  among  common  criminals. 

The  wretchedness  of  the  laboring  class  in  our 
great  cities  was  such  that  impartial  observers  de- 
clared the  slaves  on  the  Southern  plantations  to 
be  better  clothed,  fed  and  housed.  There  were 
deaths  every  winter  from  cold  and  hunger  even 
in  Philadelphia,  and  nobody  thought  it  a  matter  of 
social  reproach.  It  was  about  1830  that  Chalmers' 
ideas  as  to  our  social  responsibility  for  the  poor, 
and  of  the  best  modes  for  discharging  it,  began  to 
strike  root  in  our  cities,  leading  to  the  organization 
of  the  first  societies  for  general  relief.  Previously — 
Mathew  Carey  says — appeals  for  assistance  had 
been  met  by  the  Malthusian  arguments  that  these 


1/4  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

destitute  people  had  no  right  to  exist  and  that  to 
keep  them  alive  was  but  to  keep  up  a  breed  of 
paupers  to  live  off  the  community.  It  did  not  re- 
quire a  great  deal  of  wealth  to  harden  Dives'  heart 
against  Lazarus. 

In  a  sense  of  our  responsibility  for  our  poorer 
neighbors  the  American  people  have  made  great 
advances  in  seventy  years,  and  also  in  the  humanity 
which  treats  want  as  a  misfortune  rather  than  a 
crime.  Along  with  this  there  has  been  an  equally 
marked  advance  in  the  honesty  which  stands  by 
the  pledged  word  of  the  merchant,  and  desires  to 
give  a  just  equivalent  in  every  exchange.  Seventy 
years  ago  the  level  of  business  morality  was  vastly 
lower  than  to-day,  and  the  shameless  rascalities  of 
the  era  of  land-speculation  under  President  Jackson 
excited  nothing  but  amusement  in  others  than 
their  victims.  In  the  previous  century  the  loot  of 
the  pirate  was  sold  in  our  cities  without  a  question 
asked,  and  smuggling  was  a  profession  honorable 
enough  for  his  future  excellency,  John  Hancock. 
Peter  Faneuil,  the  founder  of  "  the  Cradle  of  Lib- 
erty," was  a  slave-trader.  The  mutual  confidence 
on  which  modern  business  rests  with  so  much 
safety,  has  been  indeed  "  a  plant  of  slow  growth," 
and  while  mercantile  morals  are  still  capable  of  im- 
provement, they  have  emerged  from  that  chaotic 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  175 

condition  which  constitutes  their  first  stage  in 
newly  developed  countries. 

Nor  is  it  safe  to  infer  from  American  excess  of 
talk  about  money  that  our  countrymen  love  it  in 
the  same  degree  as  they  talk  of  it.  All  peoples  en- 
gaged in  making  money,  rather  than  living  on  the 
savings  of  their  forefathers,  are  apt  to  talk  too  much 
about  it,  without  really  thinking  more  of  it  than 
their  neighbors,  if  so  much.  It  has  a  novelty  of  in- 
terest to  those  who  are  not  accustomed  to  enjoy  its 
possession,  which  makes  the  newly  rich  often  ridicu- 
lous in  their  enjoyment  of  it.  And  this  may  be  as 
true  of  a  whole  people  as  it  is  of  individuals. 
America  has  not  so  much  inherited  as  acquired 
wealth,  and  the  nation  has  not  yet  attained  the  re- 
serve which  elsewhere  forbids  the  "  talking  shop " 
on  the  subject. 

It  also  is  true  that  the  growth  of  American  pros- 
perity presents  elements  of  almost  romantic  con- 
trast, which,  if  not  unknown,  are  not  so  usual  else- 
where. Great  fortunes  have  been  built  up  through 
the  audacity  of  beneficent  enterprise,  which  has 
turned  wasted  resources  to  good  account,  or  has 
cheapened  and  improved  traditional  processes  in 
unforeseen  ways.  Regions  considered  hopelessly 
barren  or  moderately  productive,  have  been  found 
to  contain  the  elements  of  utility  of  the  highest 


i;6  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

value.  Bold  combinations,  enabling  a  closer  econ- 
omy in  production  and  distribution,  have  resulted 
in  enriching  the  projector  while  benefiting  the  com- 
munity. In  the  Old  World  romance  associates  it- 
self  with  the  military  profession  especially.  In  this 
more  peaceful  country,  the  qualities  which  go  else- 
where to  making  good  soldiers  and  winning  mili- 
tary renown,  have  been  directed  to  the  conquest  of 
nature  and  the  victory  over  the  obstacles  which  are 
encountered  in  turning  a  continental  wilderness 
into  a  flourishing  country. 

Nor  is  the  commercial  temper,  bred  by  constant 
contact  with  the  life  of  business,  one  which  is  to  be 
despised.  Our  Lord  distinctly  tells  us  that  it  is 
one  which  has  its  place  and  recognition  in  that 
divine  kingdom,  that  new  order  of  human  soci- 
ety, which  He  proclaimed.  In  his  parable  of  the 
Goodly  Pearl  and  the  Hid  Treasure  He  sets  the  seal 
of  his  approval  on  that  prompt  recognition  of 
ascertained  values,  and  that  equally  prompt  action 
on  the  recognition,  which  is  the  spirit  of  business. 
He  thus  anticipates  Jonathan  Edwards'  definition 
of  true  religion — "the  recognition  of  great  things 
as  great,  and  of  small  things  as  small,  and  the  act- 
ing on  that  knowledge."  In  that  statement  the 
greatest  of  American  thinkers  foreshadowed  the 
peculiar  genius  of  his  countrymen  in  matters  per- 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  177 

taining  both  to  this  life  and  to  that  which  is  to 
come.  They  surpass  all  other  peoples  in  their 
readiness  to  act  out  a  conviction  they  have  once 
reached,  and  in  setting  aside  whatever  of  traditional 
or  conventional  stands  in  the  way. 

After  all  is  said,  however,  of  the  good  that  comes 
of  the  gain  in  power  over  nature,  it  remains  forever 
true  that  the  fascination  which  possession  exercises 
over  the  human  heart  always  has  been  an  especial 
obstacle  to  the  power  and  purity  of  the  higher  life  ; 
and  never  was  this  truer  than  at  the  present  time 
and  in  our  country.  If  the  most  perilous  American 
vice  at  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  and  the  begin- 
ning of  the  nineteenth  centuries  was  drunkenness, 
that  at  the  close  of  the  nineteenth  and  the  be- 
ginning of  the  twentieth  is  certainly  covetousness. 
This  vice  is  essentially  the  attempt  to  elevate  things 
to  the  place  of  affection,  esteem  and  trust,  which 
belongs  to  persons,  and  especially  to  God.  It  is 
the  converse  of  slavery,  which  seeks  to  degrade  per- 
sons to  the  level  of  things.  Its  theory  is  that  "  a 
man's  life  "  does  "  consist  in  the  abundance  of  the 
things  he  possesses."  It  carries  with  it  a  darken- 
ing of  the  vision  of  God,  whose  perfection  consists 
in  the  unlimited  generosity  of  his  gifts  to  the  evil 
and  the  good,  the  deserving  and  the  undeserving. 
It  shuts  men's  hearts  to  the  message  of  the  Gospel, 


178  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

which  is  all  about  free  giving  and  unearned  blessed- 
ness. It  is  essentially  that  service  of  Mammon 
which,  our  Lord  warns  us,  cannot  be  combined  with 
any  real  service  of  God.  And  whereas  the  service 
of  God  brings  with  it  the  rest  and  satisfaction  of 
work  well  done  for  each  day  of  life,  this  of  Mammon 
puts  success  always  into  the  future,  and  wears  out 
the  heart  in  anxieties  about  the  evils  which  may 
never  come.  Such  a  vice  is  a  gnawing  worm  at  the 
root  of  a  people's  spiritual  life  and  their  national 
morality.  According  to  our  Lord's  diagnosis,  it 
was  this  which  was  destroying  his  own  people,  and 
was  unfitting  them  to  receive  Him  and  his  message. 
It  is  this  which  has  clung  to  that  people  through  all 
ages  since  his  time,  obscuring  the  virtues  which  they 
never  have  lost,  and  earning  for  them  the  enmity 
and  detestation  of  the  less  thoughtful  part  of  the 
gentile  world. 

The  story  of  a  nation's  life  contained  in  the  Old 
and  New  Testaments  is  not  an  exceptional  or  iso- 
lated instance  of  God's  methods  with  the  peoples 
of  the  earth.  The  conditions  of  national  perpetuity 
and  peace,  which  were  put  before  the  Jews  in  their 
Law  and  their  Prophets,  are  those  which  exist  for 
every  other  people  to  the  end  of  time.  The  sins 
which  brought  upon  them  captivity  and  dispersion, 
are  those  which  must  involve  the  ruin  of  any  people, 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  179 

whatever  may  be  the  shape  ruin  will  take  for  them. 
The  Bible  is  the  handbook  of  politics,  as  well  as  of 
theology  and  ethics,  for  those  who  take  it  in  the 
spirit  in  which  it  was  written. 

The  harm  which  this  sin  of  covetousness  is 
threatening  to  our  nation  is  not  hidden  from  even 
superficial  observers.  It  is  breeding  an  ostentation 
among  the  rich  and  an  envy  among  the  poor,  threat- 
ening to  rend  our  country  with  those  great  social 
rifts  which  we  once  hoped  were  to  be  confined  to  the 
Old  World.  Even  in  the  presence  of  a  higher 
standard  of  living  and  a  greater  comfort  than  are 
enjoyed  by  the  workmen  of  any  other  country,  men 
feel  a  bitter  discontent  with  a  social  system  which 
treats  them  as  nobodies,  ignores  their  personality, 
and  sees  in  them  nothing  but  means  to  an  end.  It 
is  making  an  audience  for  those  revolutionary  theo- 
rists who  seek  to  build  their  Utopias  on  the  ruins  of 
historical  society.  It  is  even  preparing  many  to 
accept  a  social  order  in  which  personal  liberty  would 
disappear,  and  the  judgment  of  "  the  average  man  " 
would  dominate  every  relation  and  activity  of 
human  life. 

In  politics  the  lower  commercial  spirit,  that  which 
counts  personal  profit  the  measure  of  success  in 
life,  and  puts  gain  before  use,  is  serving  to  corrupt 
public  men  of  every  class.  No  one  is  so  loud  in  de- 


i8o  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

nouncing  corrupt  and  selfish  politicians  as  the 
American  business-man.  He  ought  to  recognize 
the  fact  that  they  are  acting  at  their  worst  on  his 
own  maxims,  in  that  they  go  into  the  arena  of  pub- 
lic life  for  the  sake  of  what  they  can  get  out  of  it, 
and  not  for  the  sake  of  any  service  they  can  render 
to  the  country.  That  a  politician  is  "  on  the  make," 
is  the  worst  thing  that  can  be  said  of  him.  Is  it 
not  to  be  said  equally  of  those  who  treat  the  activi- 
ties of  business  life  as  a  means  to  no  higher  ends 
than  their  own  profit,  and  deny  their  responsibilities 
as  stewards  of  God's  gifts  ?  Before  there  can  be 
any  real  reform  of  political  life,  there  must  be  a 
much  higher  ideal  of  business  life  current  among  all 
the  classes  it  embraces.  Men  must  recognize  that 
business  is  a  social  service,  and  wealth  a  steward- 
ship for  God,  if  they  wish  to  see  public  office  recog- 
nized as  a  public  trust,  and  the  politician  made 
ashamed  of  low  aims  in  serving  the  community. 

In  international  relations  this  spirit  of  covetous- 
ness  has  taken  such  a  hold  of  the  civilized  world 
during  the  last  thirty  years  as  it  never  had  before 
since  the  days  of  the  Roman  Empire.  It  is  the 
pervading  influence  in  national  action,  where  the 
rights  and  possessions  of  weaker  peoples  are  con- 
cerned. It  has  led  to  the  partition  of  Africa  among 
the  chief  powers  of  the  European  state-system,  in 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  181 

a  fashion  as  unscrupulous  and  cruel  as  the  partition 
of  Poland  a  century  earlier — an  action  which  the 
world  had  agreed  to  stigmatize  as  criminal.  It 
would  proceed  to  carve  up  our  own  continent  in 
the  same  lawless  fashion,  were  it  not  for  the  veto 
we  impose  upon  European  aggression  on  American 
states  by  the  Monroe  Doctrine.  Its  apologists  have 
reached  the  height  of  declaring  that  the  rules  of 
morality,  which  control  the  actions  of  individuals, 
have  no  application  to  the  conduct  of  nations. 
"  Cursed  be  he  who  removeth  his  neighbor's  land- 
mark," is  merely  a  Hebrew  regulation  for  the 
adjustment  of  farm-boundaries — we  learn — and  not 
for  the  regulation  of  "  world-politics." 

Fifty  years  ago  the  principle  of  Nationality, 
preached  by  Mazzini,  was  the  thought  of  all  liberal- 
minded  men.  Only  the  champions  of  Legitimacy, 
who  claimed  that  power  inhered  by  right  in  privi- 
leged families  and  classes,  as  property  inheres  in  its 
lawful  owner,  ventured  to  call  it  in  question.  To- 
day Nationality  and  Legitimacy  are  alike  stigma- 
tized as  "  academic  "  politics,  and  the  Darwinian 
principle,  that  the  fittest  have  all  the  rights,  has 
taken  their  place.  The  weaker  must  go  to  the  wall. 
The  final  outcome  of  the  principle  is  the  absorption 
of  all  nations  in  a  single  world-empire,  for  the  last 
right  to  rule  inheres  in  the  strongest  among  the 


182  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

nations  or  empires  which  now  divide  the  world 
among  them.  Nor  can  this  be  evaded  by  classify- 
ing certain  of  them  as  "  civilized,"  since  that  is  a 
relative  term,  and  all  are  inferior  to  the  most  civi- 
lized, i.  e.t  the  possessor  of  the  longest  purse  and 
the  largest  army.  The  rule  which  justifies  England 
in  annexing  Dahomey  will  justify  us  in  annexing 
England,  and  possibly  Russia  in  annexing  us  both. 
Nothing  but  the  arbitration  of  war  can  settle  our 
relative  place  in  the  scale  of  this  "  civilization," 
which  seeks  to  benefit  the  less  advanced  peoples  by 
putting  an  end  to  their  social  development  and  im- 
posing upon  them  the  paralysis  of  an  alien  rule. 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  183 


CHAPTER  XVI. 

THE  PARTING  OF  THE  WAYS. 

THE  war  with  Spain,  in  the  summer  of  1899,  came 
as  an  interruption  to  a  process  of  peaceful  develop- 
ment, and  was  something  of  a  surprise  to  those  who 
had  cast  the  horoscope  of  the  American  republic. 
A  few  years  before  a  Methodist  bishop  had  said  to  an 
assembly  of  Englishmen,  "  Come  to  America  if  you 
leave  your  own  country,  for  you  come  to  a  country 
which  will  not  have  another  war  for  a  hundred 
years !  "  While  prophets  are  always  safe  in  predic- 
tions which  deal  with  eternal  principles,  mere  pre- 
dictors are  liable  to  mistake. 

The  strength  of  popular  feeling  moving  toward 
war  in  a  democratic  country  can  be  checked  by 
constitutional  restrictions,  and  it  has  been  so  in 
our  own  country  in  many  instances ;  but  in  some 
cases  it  both  defies  restriction  and  mocks  at  pre- 
diction. This  it  did  in  1899,  when  the  situation  of 
affairs  in  Cuba  was  known  to  the  American  people. 
It  was  felt  by  the  common  man  that  we  owed  to 
these,  our  next  neighbors  to  the  southward,  pro- 


1 84  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

tection  such  as  England  in  the  sixteenth  century 
extended  to  the  Protestants  of  France  and  the 
Netherlands,  against  a  government  which  practi- 
cally sought  their  extermination  as  the  means  of 
perpetuating  its  own  power.  It  was  felt  also  that 
the  Monroe  Doctrine  of  1823,  although  not  directly 
applicable  to  the  Cuban  situation,  had  as  a  neces- 
sary corollary  that  we  were  the  power  most  respon- 
sible for  the  condition  of  affairs  throughout  the 
continent.  It  would  be  absurd  to  assert  our  right 
to  preserve  the  territories  of  American  countries 
from  European  aggression,  while  we  stood  by  and 
witnessed  the  slaughter  of  an  American  people 
claiming  their  liberty. 

It  was  in  this  spirit  that  America  entered  upon 
the  [war,  with  solemn  declaration  that  her  purpose 
was  to  rescue  Cuba  from  the  Spanish  yoke,  and  to 
establish  it  among  the  self-governing  states  of  the 
New  World.  But  the  war  brought  its  surprises, 
besides  being  itself  a  surprise  to  many  people.  It 
left  us  with  the  remnants  of  the  great  Spanish  Em- 
pire on  our  .hands,  and  the  problem  of  disposing  of 
them  to  the  best  advantage  of  their  peoples  and 
of  the  world. 

It  would  have  been  most  in  harmony  with  our 
own  history,  most  satisfactory  to  the  conscience  of 
the  American  people,  and  most  promotive  of  do- 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  185 

mestic  peace,  if  we  had  applied  to  them  all  the 
measures  we  declared  we  intended  to  apply  to  Cuba. 
A  temporary  protectorate^  to  be  maintained  until 
they  were  in  a  position  to  establish  self-government, 
would  have  been  welcomed  by  them  as  giving 
them  assurance  against  the  aggression  of  European 
nations,  and  would  have  secured  to  us  all  the  ad- 
vantages of  commercial  preference  and  naval  hospi- 
tality, through  the  friendship  thus  established 
between  them  and  ourselves.  It  would  have  saved 
us  the  waste  of  thousands  of  lives  and  millions  of 
outlay  on  war,  and  would  have  spared  us  the  ac- 
quisition of  bitter  enmity  in  the  countries  con- 
cerned, and  keen  distrust  among  our  neighbors  of 
our  own  continent. 

If  the  actual  result  of  the  other  policy  had  been 
foreseen,  it  is  impossible  to  believe  that  it  would 
have  been  adopted.  That  it  was  not  foreseen  was 
shown  by  the  predictions  with  which  its  adoption 
was  accompanied.  But  when  once  it  was  entered 
upon,  public  pride  was  enlisted  to  carry  it  to  the 
end,  and  to  discover  reasons  why  we  are  bound  to 
suppress  resistance  to  it  wherever  resistance  has 
been  offered.  A  new  theory  of  national  duty,  of 
our  American  vocation,  and  even  of  political  moral- 
ity, has  been  evolved  in  the  effort  to  vindicate  our 
new  departure  ;  and  the  traditions  of  the  republic's 


186  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

past  have  been  openly  repudiated  by  public  men 
and  journalists. 

It  is  asserted  that  our  former  career  as  a  nation 
was  narrow  and  selfish,  in  that  we  were  taking  no 
part  in  the  great  labor  of  civilizing  the  weaker  and 
less  advanced  peoples.  "The  White  Man's  Bur- 
den," we  are  told,  has  lain  upon  other  shoulders 
than  ours,  and  we  are  invited  to  unite  in  the  great 
undertaking  of  "  civilizing  "  the  uncivilized  peoples 
by  imposing  upon  them  our  ideas  and  our  methods 
of  life. 

This  statement  is  libellous  as  regards  the  pre- 
vious history  of  America,  which  has  done  as  much 
for  the  advance  of  civilization  as  any  country  in 
the  world.  Americans  have  reclaimed  a  continent 
for  the  service  of  mankind,  feeding  millions  of  the 
Old  World  from  the  overplus  they  have  created  in 
the  New.  By  the  audacity  of  their  ingenuity  they 
have  lightened  the  burden  of  human  toil  round  the 
world,  and  have  made  possible  a  higher  standard  of 
living  to  poorer  classes  everywhere.  They  have  set 
an  example  of  orderly  self-government,  and  of 
severe  honesty  in  the  discharge  of  public  obliga- 
tions, which  has  refuted  the  pretensions  of  despot- 
ism to  be  the  sole  champion  of  settled  order  and 
public  credit,  and  has  made  possible  the  advance  of 
the  people  of  other  lands  to  the  powers  and  re- 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  187 

sponsibility  of  citizenship.  They  have  shown  that 
it  is  possible  to  maintain  public  order  and  secure 
international  respect  without  either  a  standing  army 
or  a  conscription.  They  have  strengthened  the 
hands  of  struggling  patriots  by  their  sympathy,  and 
have  thus  helped  to  the  emancipation  of  Hungary, 
Italy,  Servia  and  Bulgaria  from  the  blight  of  alien 
rule,  as  well  as  contributed  to  the  unification  of 
Germany.  True,  they  have  not  used  force  of  arms 
in  securing  these  objects,  and  to  the  political  ma- 
terialists of  the  "  blood  and  iron  "  school  this  may 
mean  that  they  have  done  nothing.  But  the  world 
does  not  move  by  material  forces,  which  in  the  long 
run  are  subservient  to  those  which  are  moral  and 
sympathetic. 

Nor  has  our  direct  influence  upon  individual 
nations  at  the  critical  moments  of  their  existence 
been  less  important  than  that  exerted  by  any  other 
people.  By  the  Monroe  Doctrine  we  ran  a  wall  of 
fire  around  the  free  states  of  our  New  World,  and 
secured  them  that  opportunity  for  the  natural  and 
independent  development  which  Chile,  the  Argen- 
tine Republic  and  Mexico  already  are  achieving, 
and  which  will  extend  to  all  of  them  in  due  course. 
Without  firing  a  gun,  we  brought  Japan  to  open 
herself  to  the  influences  of  western  civilization,  and 
to  enter  upon  a  career  which  shows  what  a  less  de- 


i88  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

veloped  country  can  make  of  itself  when  left  free 
to  adapt  itself  to  the  demands  of  the  modern  time. 
By  our  successful  protection  of  native  industry,  we 
encouraged  other  countries  to  resist  the  policy 
which  would  have  kept  the  world  in  industrial  sub- 
jection to  one  manufacturing  people,  and  have  thus 
promoted  national  growth  and  wealth  in  many 
lands,  not  excepting  the  colonial  dependencies  of 
the  nation  whose  ambitions  we  defeated. 

By  our  Christian  missionaries  we  have  been  carry- 
ing, not  the  branches,  but  the  roots  of  a  true  civili- 
zation to  every  quarter  of  the  world  ;  and  these 
have  met  the  more  hearty  welcome  because  we 
were  known  to  have  no  political  aims  to  promote 
at  the  expense  of  the  peoples  they  taught.  We 
did  not,  in  the  language  of  King  Theodore  of  Abys- 
sinia, "  first  send  a  missionary,  and  then  a  consul  to 
look  after  the  missionary,  and  finally  an  army  to 
take  care  of  the  consul."  Our  missions  have  con- 
tributed greatly  to  the  intellectual  and  even  the 
political  development  of  the  peoples  they  reached, 
as  well  as  their  moral  and  spiritual  elevation.  In 
Japan,  in  China  and  in  other  countries  they  have 
been  employed  in  educational  and  similar  work  by 
the  native  governments.  In  Syria  they  have  created 
the  standard  of  modern  Syrian  language  and  litera- 
ture, and  awakened  both  Moslems  and  native 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  189 

Christians  to  a  new  intellectual  life.  In  Egypt  they 
trained  the  officials  on  whose  services  the  present 
reforming  government  relies.  In  Turkey  their 
Roberts  College  educated  the  young  leaders  who 
awakened  the  national  spirit  in  Servia,  Bulgaria 
and  Armenia.  In  Bulgaria  the  party  of  progress 
was  long  known  as  "  the  American  party,"  because 
of  its  relation  to  its  American  teachers  in  that 
admirable  college.  In  the  Sandwich  Islands  we 
lifted  a  pagan  and  cannibal  people  into  the  rank  of 
a  Christian  nation. 

In  fine,  our  influence,  though  not  equally  effica- 
cious in  all  directions,  has  been  felt  in  all  the  chan- 
nels of  the  world's  best  life  for  a  century  past. 
We  have  borne  "  the  White  Man's  Burden "  as 
amply  as  any  people,  but  with  the  difference  that 
we  asked  for  no  wages  in  return  for  the  service  we 
rendered.  The  change  now  proposed  is  that  we 
shall  bring  into  our  international  relations  the  spirit 
of  a  low  commercialism,  and  insist  on  an  ample  re- 
turn in  trade  and  territory  for  whatever  we  do  for 
mankind. 

We  are  sometimes  invited  to  contemplate  what 
England  has  done  for  India  as  a  sample  of  what  a 
great  country  can  effect  for  the  welfare  of  a  depen- 
dency. England  has  introduced  into  India  western 
methods  of  administration,  and  her  own  notions  of 


I9o  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

justice  and  equity.  She  has  put  down  Thuggee, 
Suttee,  and  public  child-murder.  She  has  con- 
structed railroads  and  canals,  at  an  enormous  cost 
to  the  people.  She  has  promoted  secular  education 
by  government  schools  and  colleges,  which  have 
yielded  "an  abundant  crop  of  agnostics.  But  she 
has  neither  lifted  the  Hindoo  people  to  a  higher 
level  of  thought,  nor  secured  the  prosperity  of  the 
millions  under  her  rule.  By  Mr.  Rudyard  Kipling's 
testimony  we  learn  that  the  bulk  of  the  Hindoos 
are  a  seething  mass  of  unshaken  resistance  to  prog- 
ress, of  degrading  superstition,  and  of  utter  igno- 
rance, which  has  been  touched  on  the  surface  only 
by  English  influences  of  any  kind.  After  a  century 
and  a  half  of  English  occupation,  not  one  in  a 
thousand  has  laid  aside  his  own  religion  for  that  of 
his  rulers.  At  the  present  rate  and  under  English 
rule,  the  end  of  a  millennium  of  missionary  labor 
would  find  India  still  divided  between  Hindoos  and 
Buddhists,  and  the  adoption  of  Christianity  would 
still  be  regarded  as  desertion  of  nationality  and 
honor. 

As  for  the  economic  condition  of  India,  it  hardly 
could  be  worse,  and  it  never  was  so  bad  under 
native  rule  of  any  kind.  By  the  selfish  destruction 
of  the  native  manufactures  in  the  interest  of  those 
of  Great  Britain,  at  the  opening  of  last  century,  the 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  191 

greatest  manufacturing  country  of  the  world  was 
reduced  to  the  level  of  a  merely  agricultural  com- 
munity, with  the  consequent  certainty  that  every 
failure  of  the  rains  would  leave  the  people  of  India 
face  to  face  with  famine.  Under  the  reign  of  Vic- 
toria the  famine  victims  have  been  numbered  by 
tens  of  millions.  The  lowering  of  the  diet  of  the 
people  has  resulted  in  universal  splenitis,  chronic 
cholera,  and  recurrent  bubonic  plague. 

A  report  made  by  the  government's  Famine 
Commission  in  1885  traced  the  recurrence  of  this 
dreadful  calamity  to  the  uniformity  of  employment 
in  agriculture  ;  but  not  a  single  step  has  been  taken 
or  proposed  to  make  variety  of  employment  pos- 
sible to  the  masses.  To  do  so  would  run  counter  to 
English  interests,  or  would  involve  the  abandon- 
ment of  economic  maxims  which  were  devised  for 
English  conditions  only. 

In  reviewing  the  report  of  the  Famine  Commis- 
sion in  "  The  Lahore  Civil  and  Military  Gazette," 
an  English  writer,  whom  I  take  to  have  been  Mr. 
Rudyard  Kipling,  pays  America  the  compliment  of 
suggesting  that  if  India  had  been  under  our  rule, 
we  should  soon  have  found  a  way  to  overcome  the 
industrial  difficulty  and  put  an  end  to  famines. 
The  compliment  is  not  deserved.  We  probably 
would  have  done  even  worse  than  England  has 


I92  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

done.  She  is  as  well  situated  for  the  successful 
government  of  dependencies  as  any  country  of  the 
world,  and  is  as  open  to  the  considerations  of 
humanity  and  responsibility  as  any  other.  Her 
rule  in  India  is  the  most  favorable  experiment  that 
has  been  made  in  conducting  an  alien  government 
for  the  benefit  of  a  subject  people,  and  it  breaks 
down  by  every  test  that  can  be  applied.  Except 
in  establishing  peace  within  the  peninsula,  and  abol- 
ishing a  few  of  the  most  flagrant  abuses  of  the 
native  religion,  it  has  failed  at  every  point. 

A  higher  strain  of  argument  has  been  used  by 
the  advocates  of  both  English  aggressions  and  our 
own,  in  the  claim  that  both  countries  have  been 
called  by  Providence  to  undertake  the  responsibil- 
ity of  governing  the  dependencies  they  now  possess, 
and  therefore  cannot  without  blame  abandon  the 
new  path  into  which  their  steps  have  been  led.  On 
what  this  supposition  rests,  unless  it  be  that  we  and 
England  both  went  forward  to  do  what  was  not  at 
first  contemplated,  I  am  unable  to  see.  Every  step 
of  aggression  was  adopted  of  our  own  free  will  and 
must  stand  the  test  of  conformity  to  divine  law  on 
its  own  merits.  And  in  our  own  case  the  indica- 
tions of  a  providential  purpose,  I  think,  were  all 
the  other  way. 

Our  possession  of  an  area  large  enough  to  employ 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  193 

all  our  energies  for  its  entire  reclamation,  and  ade- 
quate for  the  support  of  a  population  three  times 
as  great  as  we  now  have,  seemed  to  show  that  we 
had  tasks  enough  staked  out  for  us  by  Providence.  * 
And  that  we  may  not  be  disturbed  in  them,  our 
country  is  endowed  with  a  geographical  isolation 
from  our  rivals,  which  constitutes  our  best  defence 
against  their  ambitions.  At  the  same  time  we  are 
furnished  with  neighbors,  for  whom  we  have 
assumed  a  friendly  responsibility,  and  whom  we 
might  greatly  benefit  through  establishing  closer 
relations  on  the  basis  of  peace,  arbitration,  reciproc- 
ity, and  commerce.  Our  own  situation,  both 
political  and  social,  seemed  to  present  problems  for 
our  statesmanship  sufficient  to  exercise  our  wits 
for  many  years  to  come.  It  is  only  through  the 
neglect  of  duties  that  lie  close  to  our  hands,  that 
we  can  divert  our  energies  to  the  control  and 
management  of  possessions  beyond  the  Pacific ; 
and  the  leadings  of  Providence  do  not  bring  a 
people  to  the  neglect  of  its  duties. 

There  is  nothing  novel  in  this  arrogation  of  provi- 
dential sanction  for  doing  what  we  want  to  do,  and 
neglecting  what  we  ought  to  do.  The  patronage 
of  Providence  has  been  so  often  alleged  in  behalf 
of  wrong-doing,  as  to  justify  Luther's  saying  that 
"  in  the  name  of  God  begins  all  mischief  !  "  Provi- 


194  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

dence  was  alleged  by  the  champions  of  Legitimacy, 
as  though  God  had  handed  men  over  to  be  ruled 
by  privileged  classes  and  families,  whose  prosperity 
and  luxury  made  up  for  the  ignorance  and 
wretchedness  of  the  mass  of  mankind.  It  was  the 
appeal  of  the  supporters  of  absolute  monarchy,  and 
in  its  name  passive  resistance  was  enjoined  upon 
subjects.  It  was  invoked  by  the  slave-holder,  who 
claimed  that  Providence  had  marked  out  certain 
inferior  races  as  fit  only  to  toil  at  the  command  of 
their  human  superiors,  and  had  allowed  all  the 
barbarities  of  the  slave  trade  in  order  to  bring 
these  appointed  bondsmen  into  the  rightful  subjec- 
tion, while  at  the  same  time  securing  to  them  so 
much  of  Christian  instruction  as  their  masters 
thought  good  for  them.  Thus  men  "played  at 
Providence  "  in  dealing  with  their  fellow-men,  and 
ignored  those  great  rules  of  right  which  are  the 
lines  on  which  Providence  works  its  purposes  for 
the  welfare  of  mankind. 

As  the  former  appeals  to  providential  purpose 
failed  to  command  the  assent  of  men's  consciences, 
and  thus  showed  their  futility,  so  has  this  done. 
Those  who  are  most  awake  to  those  considerations 
of  right  and  wrong  with  which  conscience  deals, 
and  through  which  Providence  works  on  human 
society,  are  commonly  dissenters  from  this  new 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  195 

policy.  "  Ian  Maclaren "  was  struck  with  this 
when  he  visited  the  United  States  during  the  first 
heats  of  the  controversy.  He  declared,  on  his  re- 
turn to  England,  that  the  best  elements  of  Ameri- 
can society  were  hostile  to  the  policy  of  forcible 
annexation.  It  has  produced,  in  fact,  just  such  a 
rending  and  dividing  in  the  moral  judgment  of  the 
nation  as  slavery  did,  '.he  earnest  and  concerned 
minority  being  then  as  now  opposed  to  a  majority, 
in  whom  moral  and  unmoral  motives  are  blended 
in  confusion,  with  the  unmoral  in  the  predominance. 
We  are  now,  as  before  1861,  a  people  with  different 
moral  standards  and  hostile  ideals.  We  are  once 
more  "  a  house  divided  against  itself,"  not  on  such 
secondary  matters  of  mere  policy  as  the  tariff  or  a 
banking  system,  but  on  the  great  principles  which 
go  down  to  the  very  roots  of  our  social  existence, 
Two  conceptions  of  social  duty  are  fighting  again 
for  the  mastery  in  the  womb  of  time,  and  whichever 
comes  to  the  birth  will  be  destined  to  give  shape 
to  the  future  of  the  republic. 

In  one  respect  the  situation  is  different  from  that 
which  the  division  about  slavery  produced.  In 
that  case  the  national  conscience  was  sharpened  by 
criticism  from  abroad,  and  Americans  were  con- 
stantly reminded  of  the  gross  inconsistency  of  our 
tolerating  such  an  enormity  in  a  professedly  free 


196  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

country — one  boastful  of  its  liberty.  Mrs.  Brown- 
ing's "  Curse  for  a  Nation  "  was  the  expression  of 
what  the  more  generous  minds  thought  of  "  Free- 
dom's foremost  acolyte  "  in  that  matter. 

At  present  all  the  influences  from  without,  with 
very  few  exceptions,  work  against  the  efforts  of 
the  American  minority,  who  are  claiming  for  others 
the  rights  of  self-government  they  enjoy  them- 
selves. From  England  especially  have  come  the 
suggestions  to  aggression,  and  the  encouragements 
to  perseverance  in  it,  which  have  weighed  most 
with  the  rulers  and  people  of  the  republic.  Just  at 
this  time  it  suits  that  country  to  have  us  active  in 
the  affairs  of  other  continents  than  our  own,  since 
our  traditional  policy  in  some  quarters  happens  to 
coincide  with  her  own  wishes  and  interest.  She 
has  therefore  applauded  our  stepping  out  of  the 
limits  of  American  activity,  with  the  expectation 
of  obtaining  our  help  in  keeping  Russia  and  other 
rivals  of  hers  out  of  China. 

A  very  brief   retrospect  of    our  earlier  history 

would  have  shown  England  that  it  is  her  interest 

• 

to  have  us  as  inactive  in  such  matters  as  is  con- 
sistent with  our  interests.  Just  as  family  quarrels 
are  the  easiest  to  incite  and  the  hardest  to  allay,  so 
our  very  connection  with  her  by  bonds  of  blood 
and  speech  has  made  it  easy  to  excite  Americans 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  197 

against  her,  when  her  judgment  of  her  interests 
clashed  with  ours  of  our  rights.  In  earlier  days 
her  safety  lay  in  the  fact  that  she  was  the  iron  pot 
and  we  the  earthen.  Her  preponderance  in  wealth 
and  military  power  would  have  made  a  collision 
with  her  a  very  serious  matter  for  us  in  1844  or 
1862.  But  the  situation  has  changed  since  we  have 
outstripped  her'  in  numbers,  and  riches  of  every 
material  kind.  For  us  to  combine  this  new  pre- 
ponderance with  ambitions  toward  expansion  of 
dominion,  and  to  use  it  for  the  creation  of  a  great 
army  and  navy,  would  be  to  produce  a  situation 
which  England  might  find  exceedingly  embar- 
rassing. 

But  it  is  not  England  that  would  suffer  the  most 
from  such  a  transformation  as  we  are  incited  by  her 
to  undertake.  It  is  America  herself.  We  are 
asked  to  enter  upon  a  career  which  has  been  the 
path  to  the  grave  for  every  republic  that  has 
adopted  it.  Monarchies  may  flourish  and  aristocra- 
cies may  fatten  on  war,  but  republics  live  by  mind- 
ing their  own  business  and  respecting  the  rights  of 
their  neighbors.  Under  whatever  name  or  form, 
the  military  republic  becomes  the  subject  of  per- 
sonal government,  because  militarism  generates  in 
its  armies  an  esprit  de  corps,  which  proves  stronger 
than  the  loyalty  of  the  soldier  to  the  law.  We 


198  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

cannot  count  on  always  having  a  Washington  to 
avert  the  perils  of  military  discontent  with  the 
faults  of  civil  rule.  Men  of  his  unselfish  character 
are  not  developed  in  the  atmosphere  of  great  mil- 
itary establishments,  or  in  the  conquest  of  weaker 
peoples.  "  The  Man  on  Horseback  "  will  be  of  a 
different  temper,  and  the  extent  to  which  our  peo- 
ple even  now  are  dazzled  by  naval  or  military  abil- 
ity and  success,  is  of  ill  omen  for  free  institutions 
when  the  day  comes  that  sees  military  and  civil 
authority  in  conflict.  Should  that  day  ever  come, 
it  will  be  written  in  the  chancery  of  heaven  that 
the  Great  Republic  died,  as  nations  always  die,  by 
suicide. 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  199 


CHAPTER  XVII. 

THE  VOCATION  OF  THE  REPUBLIC. 

IN  addition  to  the  common  vocation  of  nations, 
as  designed  to  realize  natural  rights  for  their 
people,  and  thus  to  establish  justice  within  their 
sphere  of  influence,  the  great  peoples  of  the 
world  seem  to  have  had  each  a  special  vocation,  to 
work  out  some  development  of  human  life  for  the 
benefit  of  all.  Thus  Judea  was  called  to  represent 
the  Godward  culture  and  growth  of  mankind, 
which  we  call  religion.  Greece's  mission  was  to 
nourish  the  sense  of  beauty  through  art,  in  both 
plastic  and  literary  forms,  and  above  all  in  the 
harmonious  culture  of  the  human  body.  Rome 
was  called  to  develop  the  great  ideas  of  jural 
procedure  and  order  in  her  code,  and  through 
that  she  "lives  on  in  the  life  of  every  European 
State,"  as  Mr.  Freeman  reminds  us.  France  has 
had  her  function  in  the  creation  of  social  life  and 
its  courtesies  ;  Germany  in  the  unfolding  of  phil- 
osophic thought  and  the  labors  of  philological 
research ;  England  in  the  balance  of  order  and 


200  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

liberty,  the  fusion  of  Teutonic  and  Romance 
elements.  What  is  the  vocation  of  America? 
What  is  the  task  which  Providence  has  laid  upon 
us  as  a  people,  so  that  we  may  take  our  place 
among  the  great  nations  who  have  served  mankind, 
and  not  themselves  only? 

In  one  of  M.  Guizot's  suggestive  lectures  on  the 
"  History  of  Civilization  in  Europe,"  he  speaks  of 
the  service  rendered  to  human  development  by 
the  life  of  the  baronial  castle  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
within  whose  limited  sphere  were  cherished  the 
fine  courtesies,  which  afterward  became  the  common 
property  of  all  classes.  As  over  against  America, 
all  Europe,  ancient  and  modern,  stands  in  the 
relation  of  that  baronial  castle  to  the  larger  world 
without  it.  In  the  civilizations  of  the  Old  World 
have  been  developed  what  were  the  privileges 
of  the  few ;  in  America  these  are  to  become  the 
birthright  of  the  many.  America  exists  to  take 
what  Europe  has  grown  in  such  limited  circles,  and 
to  make  it  a  universal  possession. 

It  was  the  hope  of  this  which  inspired  the 
friends  of  America  at  the  very  inception  of  our 
national  existence.  Dr.  Jonathan  Shipley,  Bishop 
of  St.  Asaph,  said  of  the  American  colonies  in 
1773:  "  May  they  not  possibly  be  more  successful 
than  their  mother  country  has  been  in  preserving 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  201 

that  reverence  and  authority  which  are  due  to  the 
laws — to  those  who  make  and  to  those  who 
execute  them?  May  not  a  method  be  invented 
of  procuring  some  tolerable  share  of  the  comforts 
of  life  to  those  inferior,  useful  ranks  of  men,  to 
whose  industry  we  are  indebted  for  the  whole? 
Time  and  discipline  may  discover  some  means  to 
correct  the  extreme  inequalities  of  condition  be- 
tween the  rich  and  the  poor,  so  dangerous  to  the 
innocence  and  happiness  of  both." 

Lincoln,  in  his  speech  in  Independence  Hall, 
spoken  while  he  was  on  his  way  to  take  up  the 
burden  of  the  presidency,  said :  "  I  have  often 
pondered  over  the  dangers  which  were  incurred 
by  the  men  who  assembled  here,  and  who  formed 
and  adopted  that  Declaration  of  Independence. 
I  have  pondered  over  the  toils  of  the  officers  and 
soldiers  who  achieved  that  independence.  I  have 
often  inquired  of  myself  what  great  principle  or 
idea  it  was  that  kept  this  confederacy  so  long 
together.  It  was  not  the  mere  -matter  of  the 
separation  of  the  colonies  from  the  mother-land, 
but  that  sentiment  in  the  Declaration  which  .  .  . 
gave  promise  that  in  due  time  the  weight  would 
be  lifted  from  the  shoulders  of  all  men."  Six 
months  later,)  when  the  war  was  in  progress,  he 
wrote  to  Congress :  "  This  is  essentially  a  people's 


202  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

contest.     On  the  side  of  the   Union  it  is  a  struggle 

*  /^" 

for     maintaining    in    the     world    that  f  form    and 

substance  of  government,  whose  leading  object  is 
to  elevate  the  condition  of  men,  to  lift  artificial 
weights  from  all  shoulders,  to  clear  the  paths  of 
laudable  pursuits  for  all,  to  afford  all  an  unfettered 
start  and  a  fair  chance  in  the  race  of  life."^ 

Our  beginning  in  converting  privilege  into  birth- 
right was  made  with  the  universalization  of  the 
suffrage.  Not  at  first,  indeed  ;  for  the  suffrage  was 
limited  in  all  the  original  thirteen  states  by  prop- 
erty qualifications  of  an  exacting  kind.  English 
tradition  was  still  potent  to  shape  American  ideas 
and  practice  in  this  as  in  other  matters  ;  and  it  was 
from  the  French  Revolution  that  the  impulse  to  a 
more  democratic  definition  of  citizenship  came. 
Mr.  Jefferson  and  his  party  deserve  the  credit  of 
sweeping  away  all  invidious  distinctions  among  the 
American  people  in  this  respect,  for  it  was  their 
triumph  that,  between  1801  and  1831,  gradually 
effected  the  substitution  of  manhood-suffrage  for 
the  narrower  basis  inherited  from  colonial  times. 
In  a  few  of  the  states  their  influence  was  less  felt, 
and  here  there  lingered  remnants  of  the  older 
restriction  down  to  our  own  times.  In  Rhode 
Island  the  property  qualification  in  the  case  of  such 
citizens  was  removed  since  the  war  for  the  Union. 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  203 

The  only  restriction  now  imposed  on  male  citizens 
of  mature  age  is  the  possession  of  an  elementary 
education,  and  that  only  in  a  minority  of  the  states. 
There  are  many  who  regret  the  abandonment  of 
the  earlier  restrictions,  and  who  would  at  least  pre- 
fer the  household  suffrage  of  the  United  Kingdom, 
which  confines  voting  to  actual  heads  of  families. 
They  think  we  have  gone  too  fast  and  too  far  in 
embracing  the  whole  people  in  the  list  of  citizens 
and  voters,  and  that  the  standard  of  our  public  life 
and  the  quality  of  our  public  men  have  been  lowered 
by  the  change.  If  they  will  but  look  more  care- 
fully into  the  political  conditions  of  the  country 
while  it  was  under  a  system  of  restricted  suffrage, 
recalling  the  methods  by  which  elections  were  car- 
ried, the  rowdyism  which  defaced  even  the  halls  of 
Congress,  the  abusive  character  of  our  newspapers, 
and  other  unhandsome  features  of  our  earlier  his- 
tory, they  will  see  that  the  remedy  for  our  admitted 
evils  is  not  to  be  found  in  putting  political  power 
into  the  hands  of  the  few,  and  in  creating  a  great 
population  which  has  no  legitimate  and  orderly 
means  of  expressing  its  wishes  or  its  fears,  and  is 
therefore  driven  to  those  which  are  illegitimate  and 
disorderly.  The  extension  of  the  suffrage  in  both 
America  and  Great  Britain  has  distinctly  reduced 
the  number  of  the  scandals  attending  the  activity 


204  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

of  electoral  machinery,  and  has  at  least  not  lowered 
the  tone  of  the  legislative  bodies. 

On  this  last  point  there  is  a  strong  impression  to 
the  contrary,  but  it  is  founded  on  ignorance.  The 
late  Hon.  John  Welsh  was  once  dining  in  Washing- 
ton with  Vice-president  Henry  Wilson  and  Bishop 
Coxe  of  Western  New  York.  The  bishop  was  de- 
ploring the  decline  of  public  life  in  America,  and 
especially  the  lowered  tone  of  Congress  in  later 
years.  "  Do  you  speak  from  personal  knowledge, 
bishop,  or  only  from  a  general  impression  ?  "  asked 
the  vice-president.  The  bishop  admitted  that  he 
spoke  only  from  general  impression,  but  an  im- 
pression he  shared  with  a  very  large  number  of  the 
American  people.  "  Then  I  can  assure  you  from 
my  personal  knowledge,"  said  the  vice-president, 
"  that  you  are  altogether  mistaken.  I  have  been  in 
public  life  for  many  years,  and  in  Congress  for  a 
large  part  of  the  time.  I  recall  the  days  of  Clay 
and  Webster,  to  which  so  many  look  back  with 
regret.  And  I  can  assure  you  that  the  tone  of  pub- 
lic life  and  the  character  of  Congress  have  risen 
very  greatly  within  my  time.  The  scenes  which 
were  not  uncommon  in  both  branches  of  Congress 
in  my  early  days,  were  such  as  the  country  would 
not  endure  now." 

This  testimony  is  confirmed  by  the  tenor  of  the 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  205 

reports,  histories  and  memoirs  which  remain  to  us 
from  what  some  are  pleased  to  regard  as  a  golden 
age  of  American  politics.  Duelling,  gambling, 
drunkenness  and  uncleanness  were  rampant  in 
Washington  in  the  earlier  half  of  last  century. 
Rowdyism  in  both  speech  and  action  characterized 
the  debates,  in  the  days  when  members  were  still 
chosen  by  the  restricted  suffrage,  which  is  now  sup- 
posed to  have  sent  only  "  gentlemen  "  into  public 
life.  "  Far-off  hills  look  green." 

It  is  often  asserted  that  manhood-suffrage  puts 
every  kind  of  character  and  ability  upon  the  same 
level,  and  thus  fails  to  recognize  those  differences  in 
human  quality  which  make  one  man  more  important 
to  society  than  another.  "  Why  should  I  take  the 
trouble  to  vote,"  asks  the  fastidious  American, 
"  when  my  vote  will  be  cancelled  by  the  uneducated 
foreigner  in  my  own  employment  ?  "  It  is  neither 
the  purpose  nor  the  effect  of  manhood-suffrage  to 
make  one  man  count  no  more  than  another  in  shap- 
ing political  action.  The  educated  man,  who  counts 
for  but  one  in  an  election,  does  so  because  he  has 
neglected  his  plain  duty  to  his  country  and  to  his 
less  favored  fellow-citizens.  Democracy  does  not 
rest  on  any  supposed  equality  in  men,  but  on  the 
principle  that  a  man  should  count  and  weigh  for 
what  stuff  there  is  in  him,  and  not  for  more  than 


206  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

that  because  of  some  stamp  put  on  him,  like  the 
mint  stamp  on  a  fifty-cent  silver  dollar.  If  he  have 
intelligence  of  public  matters,  such  as  has  not  fallen 
to  his  neighbors,  he  should  make  it  felt  in  the  direc- 
tion of  their  minds  to  reasonable  ends  and  the 
choice  of  wise  means  in  their  political  action.  It 
was  just  in  this  way  that  the  public  hope  and 
courage  were  sustained  during  the  painful  but 
heroic  years  of  the  war  for  the  Union.  It  is  be- 
cause educated  and  thoughtful  men  have  ceased  to 
feel  the  urgency  of  such  united  action  in  behalf  of 
their  country,  that  they  have  the  consciousness  of 
the  loss  of  power  in  the  public  life  of  our  later  day. 
It  is  indeed  worth  considering  whether  we  have 
not  lost  something  for  the  rightful  development  of 
democracy  by  making  suffrage  equal  for  every  sort 
and  grade  of  voter.  "One  man,  one  vote"  is  a 
principle  which  has  been  rather  assumed  than 
thought  out.  It  has  been  suggested  by  Prof. 
Lorimer,  of  the  University  of  Edinburgh,  that  this 
equality  of  suffrage  might  be  replaced  by  a  graded 
system  of  voting.  Thus  a  first  vote  might  be  given 
to  every  male  citizen  of  mature  years  ;  a  second  to 
the  possessor  of  a  common-school  education;  a 
third  to  the  voter  whose  education  had  been  carried 
to  the  point  of  obtaining  the  degree  of  some  recog- 
nized university  ;  a  fourth  to  the  citizen  who  had 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  207 

served  in  the  army  or  navy  with  credit ;  a  fifth  to 
the  possessor  of  a  specified  income,  and  so  on.  The 
votes  given  to  men  of  wealth  might  be  increased  up 
to  five  or  even  ten,  in  proportion  to  their  income, 
but  with  strict  limitation  to  a  fixed  number.  This 
would  tend  to  make  them  more  scrupulous  in  their 
use  of  money  to  obtain  votes  for  their  candidates 
and  party.  As  Mr.  Emerson  somewhere  says,  if 
you  represent  numbers  only,  wealth  will  represent 
itself  by  bribery  ;  and  if  you  represent  wealth  only, 
then  numbers  will  represent  themselves  by  violence. 
Whatever  may  be  thought  of  propositions  like 
these,  it  is  a  matter  of  congratulation  that  there  is 
to  be  no  regression  from  the  principle  of  manhood- 
suffrage  for  our  country.  "  Government  of  the 
people  by  the  people  and  for  the  people  "  is  not  to 
"  perish  from  the  earth  "  while  the  American  re- 
public stands.  It  brings  with  it  some  disadvantages, 
as  does  every  human  arrangement  for  wedding 
truth  and  fact ;  but  it  saves  us  from  others  far  more 
injurious  to  the  tone  of  character,  to  the  steadying 
sense  of  responsibility,  to  manliness  of  mind  and 
act,  and  to  the  social  interests  affected  by  public 
action.  It  leaves  the  people  free  to  adjust  govern- 
mental methods  to  their  actual  character  and  condi- 
tions, and  saves  us  from  the  perpetuation  of 
anomalies  consecrated  by  the  blue-mold  of  the  past. 


208  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

Hence  Matthew  Arnold's  saying  that  in  America 
for  the  first  time  he  saw  a  body  of  political  institu- 
tions, which  fitted  the  people  for  whom  they  were 
made  as  a  well-made  suit  of  clothes  fits  the  man  it 
was  made  for. 

Next  to  the  universalization  of  political  power 
and  responsibility,  stands  the  diffusion  of  education. 
The  order  of  the  General  Court  of  Massachusetts, 
commanding  every  "  town  "  to  erect  a  public  school 
as  soon  as  it  attained  a  population  of  fifty  souls, 
was  a  heroic  demand  on  the  people  of  a  feeble  and 
struggling  colony,  but  one  to  which  they  responded 
promptly,  and  thus  set  the  American  fashion  of  de- 
manding ample  education  for  the  young  at  least. 
It  was  part  of  the  Genevan  ideal,  which  Calvin 
realized  for  a  single  city,  and  which  thus  became 
the  standard  for  the  Reformed  and  Puritan  commun- 
ities of  the  Old  and  New  Worlds.  ,  Knox  had 
fought  for  it  in  Scotland,  and,  in  spite  of  the  greed 
of  the  nobles  in  dealing  with  the  property  of  the 
old  Church,  his  influence  at  last  prevailed  to  the 
establishing  of  those  parochial  schools  which  have 
done  so  much  toward  making  Scotland  a  prosperous 
and  intelligent  nation.  The  English  Puritans  be- 
came schoolmasters  whenever  the  Stuart  govern- 
ment shut  them  out  of  the  pulpit.  The  Scotch- 
Irish  clergy — graduates  generally  of  the  University 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  209 

of  Glasgow  —  in  America  commonly  set  up  an 
academy  alongside  the  Presbyterian  church.  In 
fact,  the  highly  intellectual  type  of  religion  which 
the  Calvinists  favored  did  no  less  than  require  the 
general  development  of  the  people's  intelligence  as 
a  condition  of  salvation. 

Along  with  the  school  they  planted  the  college. 
In  England  the  University  of  Cambridge  had  been 
the  stronghold  of  the  Puritan  party,  and  Emmanuel 
College  in  that  university  had  been  erected  by  a 
Puritan  knight  as  "  seed-plot "  for  Puritan 
preachers.  From  that  college  came  most  of  the 
early  ministers  of  New  England,  and  as  they  fore- 
saw that  they  could  not  depend  upon  England  for 
an  adequate  supply  of  ministers,  they  erected  in 
1636-38  Harvard  College  as  a  servant  "  Christo  et 
Ecclesia"  They  thus  copied  on  our  soil  the  Eng- 
lish college  at  a  time  when  that  institution  had 
reached  its  lowest  level  of  organized  efficiency  ; 
and  it  took  America  more  than  two  centuries  to 
overcome  this  disadvantage,  and  to  return  to  the 
historic  conception  of  a  university. 

The  first  to  move  in  the  right  direction  was  the 
University  of  Pennsylvania — then  the  College  of 
Philadelphia — which  enjoyed  the  advantage  of  hav- 
ing a  graduate  of  a  Scotch  university  for  its  first 
"  provost."  Afterwards  the  influence  of  Germany 


210  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

replaced  that  of  England  in  academic  organization. 
Through  Scotch  and  German  influence  the  teaching 
passed  out  of  the  hands  of  "  tutors,"  who,  as  jacks- 
of-all-trades,  taught  each  the  entire  curriculum  of 
study,  into  those  of  professors  expert  in  some 
single  branch  of  learning ;  and  the  narrow  routine 
of  classical  literature,  mathematics  and  logic  was 
expanded  by  introducing  natural  science,  literature 
and  modern  languages.  From  Germany  also, 
through  Dr.  Charles  Follen,  a  disciple  of  Father 
Jahn,  came  the  impulse  to  associate  gymnastic 
exercise  and  competition  with  scholastic. 

At  the  outset,  the  colleges  were  purely  church 
institutions,  and  their  curriculum  was  adjusted  to 
the  training  of  an  educated  ministry.  The  establish- 
ment of  the  College  of  Philadelphia  through  the 
influence  of  Franklin  in  1759 — on  the  foundation 
of  the  Academy  of  1743 — marked  a  new  stage. 
The  good  work  done  by  the  churches  in  transplant- 
ing the  higher  education  to  America,  and  in  sup- 
porting it  through  ages  of  general  indifference  to 
the  subject,  now  began  to  be  appreciated  by  pub- 
lic-spirited citizens,  and  the  wealth  of  America 
began  to  be  consecrated  to  the  service  of  learning. 
The  stream  which  flowed  so  slenderly  in  that  "  day 
of  small  things,"  has  swelled  to  a  mighty  river  of 
gifts  and  benefactions,  such  as  has  watered  no  other 
country  since  the  Middle  Ages. 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  211 

A  still  farther  step  was  taken  by  the  erection  of 
state  universities  in  the  new  states  west  of  the  Alle- 
ghanies,  as  the  crown  and  consummation  of  the 
free-school  system.  The  public  high-school  of 
America  was  already  a  recognition  that  the  Ameri- 
can boy  had  rights  beyond  the  spelling-book  and 
the  arithmetic  ;  the  state  university  proclaimed  he 
was  to  have  the  best  the  world  had  found  worth 
teaching.  In  those  states  also  the  churches  had 
begun  the  work,  carrying  the  college  into  the  grow- 
ing commonwealths  of  the  Mississippi  Valley  before 
any  general  demand  for  it  had  been  awakened. 
The  results  of  the  labors  of  such  men  as  Lyman 
Beecher,  in  laying  the  foundations  of  the  higher 
education  in  the  West,  have  thus  extended  far  be- 
yond their  expectations  in  transforming  the  whole 
system  of  public  education.  What  the  Eastern  states 
had  never  thought  possible,  the  Western  states  have 
achieved,  and  the  rest  will  have  to  follow  their 
example,  as  they  did  the  example  of  Massachusetts 
in  setting  up  schools  for  all  the  children  of  the 
state.  The  young  American  of  the  future  will  have 
his  possibilities  of  education  limited  only  by  his 
own  capacity  and  his  desire  to  learn. 

Thus  far  we  have  done  better  in  the  quantity 
than  the  quality  of  the  education  given  in  school, 
college  and  university.  The  problems  of  the  content 


212  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

of  the  best  curriculum,  of  the  best  method  of  teach- 
ing, and  of  the  business  management  of  our  schools, 
are  still  unsolved.  Our  country  has  been  injured  by 
being  made  the  dumping-ground  for  every  kind 
of  European  method  that  has  taken  the  fancy  of 
an  American  on  his  travels,  or  graduating  from  some 
foreign  university.  Especially  we  have  sought  to 
learn  the  art  of  teaching  from  the  Germans,  who 
are  among  the  worst  teachers  in  the  world,  and  the 
spirit  of  whose  educational  system  is  distinctly  alien 
to  our  nationality.  The  teaching  profession  in 
America  has  been  far  too  contemptuous  of  the  tradi- 
tions it  has  inherited  from  its  own  past,  and  far  too 
ready  to  assume  that  "  they  do  these  things  better  " 
everywhere  else  than  at  home. 

A  fault  even  graver  has  been  the  undue  direction 
of  teaching  to  the  merely  intellectual  development 
of  the  young,  without  adequate  effort  to  mould 
character  and  impress  ideals  of  right  living  upon 
them.  The  State  cannot  be  so  interested  in  merely 
intellectual  growth  as  to  spend  millions  in  procur- 
ing it.  It  wants  good  citizens  from  its  schools  and 
colleges,  more  than  "jsmart  men."  Now  the  school 
or  the  college  cannot  be  passive  in  this  matter.  It 
claims  the  working-hours  of  each  rising  generation 
through  all  the  most  plastic  years  of  human  life, 
and  what  does  obtain  an  adequate  place  in  its  train- 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  213 

ing,  is  almost  certain  to  fall  into  the  background  of 
intellectual  life.  What  is  pushed  to  the  front  with 
undue  emphasis  is  sure  to  produce  a  lack  of  balance 
in  the  national  character.  Thus  Dr.  Harris,  our 
National  Commissioner  of  Education,  says — and 
quite  rightly — that  the  stress  on  the  teaching  of 
arithmetic  in  our  schools  of  all  grades,  has  taught 
Americans  to  measure  the  worth  of  everything  by 
bulk  and  number,  to  the  neglect  of  far  more  impor- 
tant qualitative  measurements. 

This  criticism  applies  with  especial  force  to  the 
neglect  of  what  is  roughly  called  "  religious  instruc- 
tion "  in  our  schools  and  colleges.  We  have  some 
confirmed  secularists  and  agnostics,  who  desire  the 
exclusion  of  such  instruction  for  reasons  entirely 
logical  and  consistent.  Americans  generally  are 
neither  secularists  nor  agnostics,and  if  they  acquiesce 
in  this  exclusion,  it  is  because  they  believe  the  in- 
struction can  be  given  more  properly  and  adequately 
elsewhere.  But  the  school  is  the  arena  of  the  in- 
tellectual life  of  the  boy  or  girl,  and  the  facts  which 
are  ignored  or  tabooed  by  it  must  take  an  inferior 
place  in  their  estimation,  under  all  ordinary  condi- 
tions. At  the  least,  they  begin  to  think  of  them 
as  related  only  to  a  set  of  unintelligent  emotions  or 
observances,  and  that  to  love  God  with  all  our 
minds  is  not  a  part  of  his  commandment.  Has  not 


214  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

the  result  been  seen  in  the  prevalence  in  America 
of  an  unreasoning  emotionalism  in  religion,  and  in 
the  popularity  of  forms  of  religious  belief  which 
indicate  either  the  absence  of  the  power  of  rea- 
soning on  religious  subjects,  or  its  complete  perver- 
sion? 

Another  great  defect  of  our  educational  system 
is  that  it  aims  at  the  education  of  the  young,  rather 
than  that  of  all  ages.  In  our  time,  it  is  true,  the 
worth  of  youth  has  been  disclosed  to  us  as  to  no 
previous  age  of  the  world.  We  have  even  come  to 
see  something  of  what  Jesus  of  Nazareth  meant 
when  he  set  the  little  child  in  the  midst,  and  told 
men  that  entrance  into  the  kingdom,  i.  e.,  into  nor- 
mal human  society,  must  be  through  a  new  birth 
into  childlikeness.  But  education  is  a  matter  for 
all  ages,  and  was  so  regarded  both  in  antiquity  and 
the  Middle  Ages.  They  were  not  mere  youth  who 
gathered  to  hear  Socrates  refute  the  sophists,  or 
stooped  over  the  sands  of  the  gymnasium  to  follow 
Euclid's  demonstrations,  or  built  up  a  town  where 
Abelard  established  his  hermitage,  or  thronged 
Oxford  and  Paris  in  literal  myriads  to  listen  to  the 
great  scholastics. 

The  notion  that  education  is  the  business  of 
youth  alone  has  lost  ground  in  the  last  half-century, 
through  the  establishment  of  colleges  for  working- 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  215 

men  and  workingwomen,  of  societies  and  circles  for 
social  study,  and  through  the  movement  for  Uni- 
versity Extension.  It  is  still,  however,  too  preva- 
lent, in  spite  of  the  impulse  given  by  Frederick 
Maurice  to  a  better  estimate  of  the  relations  of 
learning  and  working. 

With  the  shortening  of  the  hours  of  labor  for  the 
working  classes,  the  problems  of  adult  education 
will  become  still  more  pressing.  The  main  reason 
for  that  impending  change  is  that  modern  labor 
has  lost  the  educational  quality  which  inhered  in  the 
more  varied  toils  of  the  old  workshop,  and  thus  has 
grown  more  wearing  to  all  who  are  engaged  in  it. 
That  the  working  people  may  not  be  driven  by 
very  vacuity  into  wasting  the  time  thus  recovered 
from  labor,  society  must  increase  the  opportunities 
for  the  culture  of  intellect,  and  the  elevation  of  the 
tastes  of  the  majority.  Those  who  have  seen  our 
factory-workers  enjoying  lectures  on  the  great 
artists  and  musicians,  or  heard  their  questioning  of 
lecturers  on  social  topics,  will  have  learnt  that 
there  are  few  limits,  if  any,  to  their  capacity  to  re- 
ceive and  understand  the  best  that  can  be  given 
them.  And  as  citizens  of  the  American  republic, 
they  must  be  taught  to  welcome  and  expect  the 
best  as  their  birthright. 

The  rapidly  accumulating  wealth  of  the  American 


216  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

capitalist  can  find  a  beneficial  outlet  in  the  estab- 
lishment of  colleges,  galleries  and  libraries  for  the 
use  of  the  people.  Mr.  Carnegie's  dedication  of 
his  wealth  to  such  objects  is  not  exactly  novel,  but 
it  sets  an  example  which  will  be  widely  followed. 
In  this  democratic  republic  of  ours  the  rich  man 
must  either  choose  expatriation  in  search  of  a  com- 
munity in  which  wealth  is  sought  as  the  endow- 
ment of  a  family,  or  he  must  accept  the  new 
conception  of  it  as  a  public  trust.  America  is  the 
only  country  where  a  rich  man  subjects  himself  to 
general  criticism  by  leaving  all  his  property  to  his 
kindred,  to  the  neglect  of  public  objects.  And  our 
men  of  wealth  will  soon  learn  that  the  best  way  is 
to  give  while  they  still  live,  as  this  insures  them 
against  defeat  of  their  purposes  by  litigation,  be- 
sides securing  them  the  personal  enjoyment  of  see- 
ing the  results  of  their  gifts. 

Along  with  this  private  munificence,  there  will 
come  an  enlargement  of  the  State's  conception  of 
its  duty  toward  the  culture  of  its  people.  The 
rapid  extension  of  aid  to  the  higher  education,  and 
the  great  increase  of  public  libraries  in  all  parts  of 
the  country,  are  the  beginnings  of  a  development 
which  will  make  art  and  literature  as  democratic  as 
in  those  cities  of  Greece  and  Italy  in  which  these 
had  their  beginnings.  Mr.  Walt  Whitman,  indeed, 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  217 

has  asserted  that  art  and  literature  have  been 
hitherto  monarchical  and  aristocratic,  and  that  their 
traditional  forms  should  be  rejected  for  this  reason 
by  a  free  people.  Mr.  Whitman  knew  little  of  their 
history  or  he  would  not  have  made  such  an  asser- 
tion. It  was  in  the  most  democratic  communities 
of  antiquity  and  the  Middle  Ages  that  both  flour- 
ished.  Great  art,  as  Cardinal  Wiseman  says,  found 
its  cradle  in  the  workshop  of  the  artisan,  and  was 
taken  into  the  courts  of  kings  and  the  castles  of 
nobles  only  to  be  corrupted  by  being  made  the  tool 
of  ostentation  and  luxury. 

Our  calling  is  to  be  a  "  new  race  of  more  practi- 
cal Greeks,"  as  Mr.  Lowell  says.  What  that  mar- 
vellous people  achieved  in  the  perfection  of  the 
human  form,  of  human  power  to  appreciate  beauty 
in  poetry,  architecture,  sculpture  and  painting,  and 
of  relish  for  the  serious  discussion  of  the  greatest 
themes  of  human  interest,  America  is  called  to 
achieve  in  a  Christian  atmosphere,  and  for  hundreds 
of  millions  instead  of  myriads. 

The  intellectual  activity  of  a  whole  people  brought 
to  bear  on  the  great  problems  of  life  and  culture,  is 
the  natural  outcome  of  our  democratic  development. 
Thus  far  the  world's  intellectual  work  has  been  done 
for  it  by  a  few  chosen  spirits,  who  worked  without 
the  support  and  stimulus  of  national  sympathy. 


218  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

Nor  will  democracy  dispense  with  such  leaders  in 
any  field.  It  cherishes  no  delusions  as  to  the  vast 
differences  of  intellectual  capacity  which  sunder  a 
William  Shakespeare  from  a  Martin  Farquhar  Tup- 
per.  As  it  accepted  the  leadership  of  a  Lincoln,  so 
will  it  welcome  that  of  any  man  of  real  genius  in 
whom  it  discerns  a  capacity  for  superior  work.  Its 
joyous  welcomes  to  European  men  of  letters  are  an 
indication  that  it  suffers  from  no  envy  of  intellec- 
tual distinction.  But  as  in  politics,  it  will  think  for 
itself  and  act  for  itself  even  in  accepting  leadership, 
and  it  will  give  to  those  it  accepts  the  hearty  sup- 
port which  only  a  whole  people  can  give. 

Nor  will  it  alone  be  benefited  by  this  sympathy. 
As  Herder  first  pointed  out,  the  real  literature  and 
art  of  the  world  have  been  the  expression  of  the 
spirit  and  life  of  a  whole  people,  while  much  that 
has  claimed  to  rank  with  the  permanent  results  of 
the  world's  growth,  in  art  and  thought,  has  been 
vitiated  by  being  the  expression  only  of  the  mind 
and  spirit  of  a. class.  The  really  great  geniuses  are 
those  who  interpret  their  nation's  character  and 
mind  to  us,  as  Homer,  Shakespeare  and  Burns  have 
done.  Alexandrian  copies  of  literature — echoes, 
not  voices — have  been  produced  by  literary  coteries, 
who  commonly  repudiated  public  sympathies  of  any 
sort,  and  set  up  their  private  standards  of  excellence. 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  219 

What  democracy  in  literature  may  mean  has  been 
shown  within  the  limits  of  a  city  in  Athens  and  in 
Florence.  It  is  for  America  to  do  the  same  on  a 
larger  scale. 

Thus  far  we  have  made  but  a  very  imperfect  ap- 
proach to  this  right  relation  of  the  public  to  the 
intellectual  life.  The  best  promise  for  the  future  is 
found  in  the  universal  curiosity,  which  has  been 
fostered  by  newspaper  and  magazine,  as  to  the  cur- 
rent interests  of  the  thinking  world.  Science,  art, 
literature,  theology,  sociology,  invention,  discovery 
have  acquired  a  large  public  in  America,  not  always 
characterized  by  depth  or  discrimination — most 
commonly  the  contrary,  indeed.  But  this  very 
activity  is  full  of  promise.  With  the  aid  of  better 
education,  this  general  activity  about  intellectual 
subjects  will  work  itself  clear,  as  does  running  water. 
Our  democracy  is  still  in  the  Thersites  stage  as  re- 
gards  many  things  ;  but  Thersites  was  the  forerun- 
ner of  Pericks. 

We  have  already  gone  a  good  way  toward  re- 
alizing the  hope  of  Dr.  Shipley  that  "  some  toler- 
able share  of  the  comforts  of  life "  in  our  New 
World  would  be  secured  to  those  whose  labors  are 
employed  in  securing  those  comforts  to  all  of  us. 
In  our  New  World  the  compensations  of  labor  and 
the  standard  of  living  for  the  working  classes  are 


220  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

such  as  not  even  Americans  in  1773  would  have 
thought  possible.  While  the  condition  of  free  labor 
in  America  can  never  have  been  so  degraded  as  in 
Europe,  it  was  low  enough  when  the  independence 
of  the  republic  was  secured,  and  its  constitution  of 
government  settled.  This  was  due  to  the  scarcity  of 
population,  which  rendered  it  impossible  for  Ameri- 
cans as  yet  to  really  occupy  their  country  and  mas- 
ter its  resources ;  and  to  the  aristocratic  prejudices 
and  arrangements  which  the  country  had  inherited 
from  Europe.  An  abundance  of  land  open  to  settle- 
ment was  by  no  means  the  solvent  of  social  prob- 
lems which  some  would  have  us  think  it.  When 
every  American  could  get  all  the  land  he  chose  to 
occupy,  the  condition  of  the  poorer  class  was  at  its 
worst. 

The  great  reason  for  the  difference  between  our 
own  times  and  those  of  Washington  and  Franklin 
in  this  respect,  is  that  in  America  the  laws  of  the 
economic  order  have  been  given  a  chance  to  show 
their  beneficence.  With  the  growth  of  numbers 
under  our  free  conditions,  there  has  been  a  still 
greater  growth  of  industrial  power,  and  an  en- 
couragement to  labor  to  employ  inventive  skill  in 
the  improvement  of  tools  and  methods  of  using 
them.  This  constant  improvement  has  lowered  the 
value  of  things,  and  increased  that  of  persons,  and 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  221 

has  thus  enabled  labor  to  secure  constantly  more 
favorable  terms  for  itself  in  its  partnerships  with 
capital.  For  capital  itself  is  a  portion  of  those 
things  whose  value  falls  with  the  improvement  in 
methods  of  producing  them,  while  that  of  the  laborer 
rises  in  comparison.  By  this  change  labor  benefits 
in  our  country  more  than  elsewhere,  because  there 
are  fewer  obstacles  to  its  beneficent  operation  than 
in  countries  where  social  prejudice  still  holds  labor 
back,  and  treats  with  a  certain  resentment  any 
rapid  improvement  in  its  condition,  finding  an  es- 
pecial and  malicious  enjoyment  in  exposing  the  fol- 
lies with  which  it,  like  every  other  class,  abuses  un- 
accustomed wealth. 

Under  the  operation  of  the  economic  laws  of  dis- 
tribution, there  is  a  steady  approach  to  equality  of 
condition,  through  the  laborer  taking  a  constantly 
increasing  share  of  the  joint-product  of  labor  and 
capital.  Complete  equality  is  neither  possible  nor 
desirable.  There  always  will  be  those  who  possess 
those  gifts  of  thrift,  enterprise  and  capable  over- 
sight, that  are  required  in  the  "  captains  of  industry," 
just  as  there  will  be  men  of  unusual  gifts  in  every 
other  field  of  human  exertion.  These  will  always 
accumulate%  wealth  more  rapidly  than  do  men  gener- 
ally, and  their  power  to  do  so  is  a  service  to  society, 
when  employed  within  the  limits  set  by  honesty  and 


222  THE  HAND  OF  GOD 

decency.  We  envy  their  gift  more  than  there  is 
any  reason  for,  as  though  it  brought  them  a  finer  en- 
joyment of  life  in  making  larger  possessions  possible 
to  them.  This  envy  is  a  social  sin  of  our  time, 
which  poisons  much  happiness  in  the  less  wealthy 
classes,  and  is  at  bottom  one  of  many  forms  of 
mammon-worship.  As  well  envy  the  great  artist, 
or  the  great  poet,  and  think  of  his  endowments  as 
something  deducted  from  what  we  should  have 
possessed.  All  alike  are  our  servants,  and  we  are 
the  better  for  their  existence. 

We  are,  however,  by  no  means  at  the  end  of  that 
approach  toward  equality  of  condition,  which  has 
been  so  marked  a  feature  of  our  social  history  dur- 
ing the  last  century  in  America.  There  will  be  a 
reduction  in  the  hours  of  labor,  an  increase  in  its  re- 
wards, and  a  general  diffusion  of  comfort,  such  as 
we  can  no  more  imagine,  than  could  the  Americans 
of  1830  have  imagined  the  change  for  the  better 
which  seventy  years  have  accomplished.  At  that 
date  our  people  died  of  cold  and  hunger  every 
winter  in  great  cities,  but  no  man  laid  it  to  heart  ; 
and  Dr.  Ezra  T.Ely,  after  his  first  visit  to  the  South, 
declared  that  the  negro  slave  was  better  fed,  clothed 
and  housed,  than  the  workingman  in  Philadelphia. 
At  that  time,  men,  women  and  children  labored  for 
twelve,  thirteen  and  fourteen  hours  a  day  in  our 


IN  AMERICAN  HISTORY.  223 

factories,  and  received  in  return  what  would  now  be 
thought  a  mere  pittance.  The  highest  wages  a 
woman  could  earn  was  twenty-five  cents  a  day, 
whatever  her  employment.  Fuel  was  so  scarce  that 
many  rich  people  threw  open  their  kitchens  on 
winter  mornings  to  the  working  people,  that  these 
might  warm  themselves  thoroughly  before  going  to 
their  work.  To  those  who  know  what  has  been  the 
process  of  improvement,  "  experience  worketh 
hope  "  of  still  better  things  in  the  future. 

The  republic  will  have  realized  its  destiny  when 
it  has  shown  the  world  that  no  wreck  of  the  historic 
forms  of  society  is  required  to  satisfy  the  reasonable 
demands  of  the  many  to  share  in  the  material  and 
intellectual  results  of  the  social  movement.  It  will 
have  "  lifted  the  weight  from  the  shoulders  of  all 
men  "  by  establishing  a  free  political  and  economic 
order,  in  which  every  man  will  be  able  to  live  his 
life  under  worthily  human  conditions,  partaking  of 
the  best  that  the  race  has  achieved,  governing  and 
guiding  himself  by  the  finest  wisdom  the  centuries 
have  bequeathed  to  us,  and  sharing  in  the  freedom 
of  a  community  really  governed,  because  self-gov- 
erned. 


INDEX. 


Abelard,  Abbe,  214. 
Aboriginal   population   of 
America,  12;  condition  of, 

'3- 

Abundance  of  land  no  solvent 
of  social  problems,  220. 

Adams,  John,  on  the  providen- 
tial settlement  of  America, 
21 ;  opposed  to  Irish  lead- 
ers, 108. 

Adams,  John  Quincy,  Secre- 
tary of  State,  96;  writes 
formula  of  "Monroe 
Doctrine,"  96;  favors  the 
establishment  of  an  Ameri- 
can state-system,  97. 

Adams,  Samuel,  favors  adop- 
tion of  United  States 
Constitution,  75. 

Aggressions,  English  and 
American,  192,  et  seq. 

Alien  and  Sedition  Acts,  the, 
80. 

America,  aboriginal  population 
of,  n ;  driven  to  alliance 
with  France,  61 ;  conceded 
the  leading  place  on  the 
western  continent,  97 ;  the 
vocation  of,  200. 

American  colonists,  escape 
from  persecution,  20;  a 
picked  and  sifted  element, 
21. 

American  indifference  to  sister 
republics,  101. 

American  literature,  begin- 
nings of,  41,  et  seq. 

American  nation,  area  occupied 
by,  8;  resources  of,  9; 
created  from  warring  ele- 
ments, 24. 


American      opinion,     divided 

condition   of,   on  war   for 

Independence,  52. 
American    people,    many    of, 

favor  monarchy,  63,  64. 
American    republic,    relations 

of,   with    sister  republics, 

I3I- 

American  sympathy  with  strug- 
gling patriots,  187. 

American  Ulster,  the,  20. 

American  war  for  Indepen- 
dence, 5. 

Americans,  colonial,  religious 
and  political  differences  of, 
22;  native,  rise  of,  to  emi- 
nence, 34 ;  a  self-governing 
people,  51. 

Andersonville  Prison,  the 
keeper  of,  159. 

Anglican  conception  of  church 
and  state,  16. 

Anne,  Queen,  a  zealous  Angli- 
can, 48. 

Annexation,  forcible,  policy  of, 
195. 

Anti-Federalists  oppose  adop- 
tion of  Constitution,  74. 

Arena,  the  (chap,  ii.),  7-13. 

Aristocratic  restrictions  on 
suffrage  removed,  113. 

Arnold,  Matthew,  on  American 
political  institutions,  208. 

Asiatic  people,  an,  in  America, 
II. 


Ballot,  the,  worthless  to  the 
freedman,  169. 

Barnes,  Albert,  temperance  re- 
former, 1 20. 


225 


226 


INDEX. 


Beecher,  Lyman,  delivers  ser- 
mons on  intemperance, 
120;  labors  of,  in  cause  of 
higher  education  in  the 
West,  211. 

Behmenists,  the,  19. 

Benezet,  Anthony,  opponent  of 
slavery,  118. 

Bible  account  of  a  nation's 
history,  i. 

Bible  history,  the  writers  of,  5. 

Bismarck,  Prince  von,  25. 

"  Black  Laws,"  the,  of  South 
Carolina,  159. 

Boston,  selectmen  of,  opposed 
to  Scotch-Irish,  22,  23. 

Braddock,  Gen.,  stupidity  of, 
60. 

Breck,  Samuel,  on  drunken- 
ness, 119. 

British  armies  in  America 
poorly  officered,  60. 

British  Government  hinders 
emigration  to  America, 
67 ;  ruins  indigo  industry 
of  Southern  States,  68. 

British  Guiana,  growth  of, 
threatens  absorption  of 
Venezuela,  99. 

British  officers,  entertainment 
of,  in  America,  43. 

Browning,  Elizabeth  B.,"The 
Curse  for  a  Nation,"  196. 

Brynhild  of  the  West,  the,  98. 

Buchanan,  James,  administra- 
tion of,  138. 

Burgoyne,  Gen.,  60. 

Calhoun,  John  C.,  declares 
annexation  of  Texas  essen- 
tial to  slavery,  133. 

California,  gambling  in,  123; 
admitted  to  the  Union, 

!35- 

Calvin,  John,  in  favor  of  edu- 
cation, 208. 

Cambridge,  University  of,  the 
stronghold  of  the  Puritan 
party,  209. 


Canada,  Washington  opposed 
to  French  rule  in,  61 ;  rela- 
tion of,  to  slavery,  143. 

Canadian  insurgents  of  1837, 
56. 

Canning,  George,  suggests 
"  Monroe  Doctrine,"  95. 

Carey,  Mathew,  173. 

Carib  Indians  introduce  maize 
plant,  13. 

Carleton,  Gen.,  60. 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  on  the  Res- 
toration, 39;  his  theory  of 
mankind,  152,  153. 

Carnegie,  Andrew,  example  of, 
to  be  followed,  216. 

Census,  the  first,  105. 

Chalmers,  Thomas,  on  respon- 
sibility for  the  poor,  173. 

Chaos  and  construction  (chap, 
vii.),  63-78. 

Chatham,  Lord,  on  Providence, 
6;  great  speeches  of,  on 
American  problem,  29; 
alluded  to,  147, 

Chesapeake  fisheries,  dispute 
over,  68. 

Christian  missionaries,  work 
of,  188. 

Church  of  England,  relation  of, 
to  the  state,  46;  in  the 
colonies,  47,  et  seq.;  the 
first  two  Georges  care 
nothing  for,  49. 

Clarendon,  Lord,  devotion  of, 
to  Anglican  interests,  48. 

Clay,  Henry,  vacillating  course 
of,  134;  on  the  compromise 
measures,  136. 

Clayton-Bulwer  treaty,  142. 

Cobbett,  William,  takes  up  his 
residence  in  America,  107. 

Code-Napoleon  in  Louisiana, 

83- 

Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor, 
plans  a  community  in 
America,  86. 

College  of  Philadelphia  estab- 
lished through  influence  of 
Franklin,  210. 


INDEX. 


227 


Colonial  American,  the,  fond  of 
show,  43. 

Colonial  days,  standard  of  liv- 
ing in,  26. 

Colonies,  American,  sympathy 
between,  25;  population  of, 
in  1754,  52;  lack  of  manu- 
factures in,  53;  salt-famine 
in,  54. 

Colonists  welded  together  by 
economic  necessities,  29, 
30;  many  in  favor  of  Great 
Britain,  52;  unused  to  dis- 
cipline, 52. 

Columbus,  10,  ii. 

Commerce  on  the  side  of  slav- 
ery, 140. 

"  Confederate  States  of  Amer- 
ica" formed,  145. 

Confederation,  Articles  of,  a 
loose  compact,  64. 

Constitution  of  the  United 
States,  a  compromise,  71; 
eulogy  of  English  states- 
man on,  72;  Sir  Henry 
Sumner  Maine  on,  73;  ex- 
cites distrust,  74. 

Continental  Congress,  opening 
of,  at  Philadelphia,  55; 
discontent  of  soldiers  with, 
63;  constitutional  conven- 
tion called  by,  68. 

Cooperation,  lack   of  colonial, 

54- 
Cornwallis     the    only    British 

general  of  ability,  60. 
Covetousness  the  most  perilous 

American  vice,  177,  et  seq. 
Coxe,  Bishop,  deplores  decline 

of  public  life  in  America, 

204. 

Coxe,  Tench,  authority  on  in- 
dustrial statistics,  66. 
Creeds,    European  enmity   of, 

extended  to  the  colonists, 

28. 
Cuba,  situation  of   affairs   in, 

183. 

Darwinian  principle,  the,  181. 


Davis,  Jefferson,  compared 
with  Abraham  Lincoln, 
149;  deplores  Lincoln's 
death,  158. 

Debtors,  insolvent,  imprison- 
ment of,  1 16. 

Democracy,  principle  of,  205; 
cherishes  no  delusions  on 
intellectual  equality,  218. 

Distribution,  effect  of  economic 
laws  of,  221. 

Disunion  talk  of  anti-slavery 
orators,  143. 

Douglas,  Stephen  A.,  bill  of, 
138;  debate  of,  with  Lin- 
coln, 150. 

Dred  Scott  case,  decision  of, 
126. 

Duche,  Rev.  Jacob,  at  opening 
of  Continental  Congress, 

Dunkers  ("  Brethren,"  or  Ger- 
man Baptists)  in  America, 
19. 

Dutch,  the,  colonize  the  Hud- 
son and  the  Delaware,  17. 

Economic  laws  of  distribution, 

effect  of,  221. 
Education,   diffusion  of,   208; 

adult,  214,  et  seq. 
Educational  system,  defect  in, 

214. 
Edwards,  Jonathan,  preaching 

of,  32,  33;  his  definition  of 

true  religion,  176. 
"Elect  people,"  3. 
Ely,   Dr.   Ezra    T.,   compares 

negro  slave  with  Philadel- 
phia workman,  222. 
Emancipation  expected  in  the 

South,      124;     opinion 

changes,  124. 
Emerson,    Ralph    Waldo,    on 

representation,  207. 
Emigration,  to  America,  British 

government    hinders,    67; 

to  Kansas,  139. 
Emmanuel  College,  209. 
England,  population  of,  at  out- 


228 


INDEX. 


break  of  American  Revo- 
lution, 52;  in  India,  189, 
et  sff.;  suggests  aggression 
to  America,  196 :  vocation 
of,  199. 

English  tradition  potent  to 
shape  American  ideas,  202. 

Equality,  complete,  neither 
possible  nor  desirable,  221. 

"  Era  of  Good  Feeling,"  97; 
personal  jealousies  of,  132. 

"  Essays  to  do  Good,"  Cotton 
Mather's,  41. 

European  immigration,  no  re- 
striction imposed  upon, 
103. 

European  publicists  criticise 
"  Monroe  Doctrine,"  102. 

Everett,  Edward,  Gettysburg 
oration  of,  150. 

Exiled  princes  make  their 
home  in  America,  106. 

Expansion  and  invention  (chap, 
viii.),  79-91. 

Expansion,  fears  of,  86. 

Faneuil,  Peter,  a  slave-trader, 
174. 

Farmer,  American,  disapproves 
of  machinery,  89. 

Federalist  Party,  rapid  extinc- 
tion of,  84. 

Federalists  opposed  to  the 
Louisiana  Purchase,  85. 

Ferdinand  VII.  abolishes  Con- 
stitution of  Spain,  94. 

Fifteenth  Amendment,  the,  163. 

First  Church  in  Hartford,  pas- 
tor of,  26. 

First  welding   (chap,  iv.),   22- 

38. 

Fisheries,  the,  furnish  a  pre- 
liminary step  to  actual 
settlement  in  North 
America,  13. 

Florida  ceded  by  treaty  with 
Spain,  132. 

Follen,  Charles,  gives  impulse 
to  gymnastic  exercise,  112, 
210. 


Fort  Sumter,  the  firing  on,  144. 

Founders,  the  (chap,  iii.),  14-21. 

France,  war  of,  with  England, 
for  North  America,  43; 
vocation  of,  199. 

Franklin,  Benjamin,  Deistic 
views  of,  5,  6 ;  characteris- 
tics of,  35;  receives  ap- 
pointment from  British 
government,  35;  testimony 
of,  to  Cotton  Mather,  42 ; 
belief  of,  in  Divine  Provi- 
dence, 56;  receives  letter 
from  Thomas  Pownall,  62; 
memorable  speech  of,  in 
Continental  Congress,  69; 
on  resistance  of  Anti-Fed- 
eralists to  United  States 
Constitution,  74;  influence 
of,  in  establishing  College 
•  of  Philadelphia,  210. 

Freedmen,  conduct  of,  162. 

Freeman,  E.  A.,  cited,  199. 

Frelinghuysen,  Jacob,  preach- 
ing of,  32. 

Fremont,  John  C.,  alluded  to, 

ISO- 
French  alliance  with  America, 

reasons  for,  61. 

French   Revolution,   the,    con- 
tributes to  augmentation  of 
America,   106;  democratic 
impulse  of,  202. 
French  settlements  in  America 

begun  by  Huguenots,  17. 
Friends,      English,      colonize 
Pennsylvania,  18;  flock  to 
hear  Whitefield,  33;  slave- 
holding     banished      from 
Society  of,  1 18. 
Fugitive  Slave  Law,  the,  126, 

136. 

Fulton,  Robert,  builds  steam- 
boat, 87. 

Gambling  prevalent  on  steam- 
boats, 123;  in  California 
and  Washington,  123. 

Gambling  temper  cherished  by 
lotteries,  122. 


INDEX. 


229 


Garrison~  William  Lloyd,  and 
the  Liberator,  128;  and  the 
Constitution,  143. 

Gates,  Gen.,  60. 

Gee,  Joshua,  insight  of,  into 
American  conditions,  44. 

Genet,  Citizen,  handling  of,  by 
Washington,  76. 

Geneva  the  model  community 
of  Presbyterians  and  Puri- 
tans, 1 6. 

George  III.,  a  fervent  church- 
man, 49;  introduces  a  reign 
of  favoritism  and  corrup- 
tion, 59;  "  No  Compro- 
mise," his  policy  in  Amer- 
ica, 59. 

German  settlers  in  the  middle 
colonies  unwelcome,  23. 

German  States,  Great  Britain 
could  draw  recruits  from, 
52. 

Germans,  among  the  worst 
teachers,  212. 

Germany,  a  nation  when 
divided,  24;  vocation  of, 
199;  influence  of,  in  aca- 
demic organization,  210. 

Gibbon,  Edward,  alluded  to, 
66. 

God,  will  of,  in  the  movements 
of  history,  2,  et  seq, 

Gorlitz,  theosophic  theories  of, 
19. 

Grant,  Gen.  U.  S.,  156. 

Grants  of  European  govern- 
ments cause  disputes,  23. 

Great  Awakening,  the,  32. 

Great  Britain,  area  of  her  na- 
tional domain,  8;  reaps 
harvest  of  Canning's  di- 
plomacy, 98. 

Greece,  mission  of,  to  nourish 
the  sense  of  beauty,  199. 

Greek  Christendom,  relation 
of,  to  Syria,  14. 

Guizot,  M.,  suggestive  lectures 
of,  200. 

Hale,  Sir  Matthew,  influence 


of  writings  of,  upon 
Washington,  37;  the  real- 
ized ideal  of  the  judge,  57. 

"  Half-way  covenant,"  the,  31. 

Halleck,  Fitz-Greene,  on  Cot- 
ton Mather,  41. 

Hamilton,  Alexander,  influ- 
ences New  York  to  adopt 
United  States  Constitu- 
tion, 7  5;  tribute  of  Barthold 
Niebuhr  to,  76;  influence 
of,  on  policy  of  the  govern- 
ment, 76;  assists  in  pre- 
paring Washington's 
"  Farewell  Address,"  77. 

Hancock,  Gen.  W.  S.,  156. 

Hancock,  John,  46;  a  smug- 
gler, 174. 

Harris,  Dr.,  on  teaching  arith- 
metic in  public  schools, 
213. 

Harvard  College,  209. 

Hayes,  President  Rutherford 
B.,  administration  of,  162. 

Hayti,  white  settlers  of,  come 
to  Philadelphia,  106. 

Hebrew  prophets,  teachers  of 
present  duty,  117. 

Hegemony  of  the  continent, 
the  (chap,  ix.),  92-104. 

Henry,  Patrick,  55;  opposes 
adoption  of  Constitution, 

74- 

Herder,  on  art  and  literature, 
218. 

High-school,  public,  211. 

Holy  Alliance,  the,  supports 
Ferdinand  VII.,  94;  over- 
throws the  liberties  of 
Spain,  131. 

"  Holy  Club,"  the,  32. 

Household  suffrage,  203. 

Howard,  Gen.  O.  O.,  156. 

Howe,  Gen.,  60. 

Huguenots  begin  French  set- 
tlements in  America,  17. 

"  Ian  Maclaren  "on  America's 
policy  of  forcible  annexa- 
tion, 195. 


230 


INDEX. 


Ice  Age,  the,  II. 

"  If,"  the  Hebrew,  written  on 
our  history,  131. 

Immigrant,  the  (chap,  x.),  105- 
116;  a  national  American, 
ii i ;  enlarges  the  range  of 
intellectual  interests,  112. 

Immigrants,  rapid  increase  of, 
107;  good  character  of, 
108;  benefits  of,  109; 
younger  generation,  trans- 
formed through  public 
schools,  114. 

Independence,  confidence  in 
success  of,  not  universal, 
55;  war  for  (chap,  vi.),  51- 
62. 

India,  England  in,  189  ;  econo- 
mic condition  of,  190. 

Indians,  disputes  of,  regarding 
territory,  28. 

Indigo  industry  of  Southern 
States  ruined  by  British 
government,  68. 

Industrial  development,  a  new 
era  of,  170,  et  seq. 

Irish  nationalist  leaders,  ex- 
perience of  England  with, 
80. 

Italy,  a  nation,  24. 

Jackson,  Andrew,defends  New 
Orleans,  84;  era  of  land 
speculation  under,  174. 

Jackson,  Gen.  Thomas  J.,  156. 

Jahn,  Father,  210. 

James,  King,  saying  of,  "  No 
bishop,  no  king,"  17 ; 
abolishes  first  Virginia 
company,  17. 

Japan  opened  to  Western  civil- 
ization, 187. 

Jay,  John,  treaty  of,  with  Great 
Britain,  76. 

Jefferson,  Thomas,  succeeds 
to  the  Presidency,  79;  mis- 
trust of,  79;  fears  not  ful- 
filled, 81 ;  good  sense  of,  in 
purchasing  Louisiana,  85; 
concerned  about  the  first 


census,  105;  opposed  to 
slavery,  123;  deserves 
credit  for  equality  of  citi- 
zenship, 202. 

Jehovah,  relations  of,  to  his 
people,  130. 

Jesuit  fathers'  estimate  of  na- 
tive American  population, 

12. 

Jewish  people,  the  calling  and 

election  of,  3. 
Johnson,    Andrew,    President, 

158;     quarrels     with    his 

party,  160. 

Johnston,  Gen.  A.  S.,  156. 
Johnston,  Prof.,  of   Princeton, 

on  immigration,  no. 
Judea,  special  vocation  of,  199. 

Kansas,  struggle  in,  138,  et  seq. 

Kipling,  Rudyard,  opinion  of, 
on  Hindoos,  190. 

Kirk,  pledges  to,  broken,  47. 

Knox,  John,  fights  for  educa- 
tion in  Scotland,  208. 

Labor,  American,  protection 
for,  demanded,  66;  short- 
ening the  hours  of,  215. 

Laborer,  immigrant,  economic 
condition  of,  improved, 

"S- 

Laboring  class,  wretchedness 
of,  in  great  cities,  173. 

Latin  or  Romance  nations,  14. 

Laud,  Archbishop,  48. 

Lecky,  on  heroic  period  of 
American  history,  54,  147. 

Lee,  Gen.  Robert  E.,  156. 

Leibnitz,  saying  of,  39. 

Lieber,  Francis,  alluded  to,  76. 

Lincoln,  Abraham,  quotes 
Washington's  General  Or- 
der to  his  army,  58 ;  on  slav- 
ery, 128;  inaugural  ad- 
dress of,  146;  compared 
with  Jefferson  Davis,  149; 
Gettysburg  oration  of,  1 50 ; 
religious  views  of,  151,  et 
seq.;  his  method  as  a  ruler, 


INDEX. 


231 


152;  patriotism  of,  153; 
second  inaugural  of,  154; 
death  of,  158;  speech  of, 
in  Independence  Hall,  201. 

Locomotive  invented  by  Ste- 
phenson,  88. 

Longstreet,  Gen.  James,  156. 

Lorimer,  Prof.,  of  Edinburgh, 
on  equality  of  suffrage, 
206. 

Lotteries  suppressed,  122. 

Louisiana  question,  the,  81,  et 
seq. ;  purchase  of  the  terri- 
tory, 82. 

Louisiana  Purchase  gives  out- 
let on  Pacific,  132. 

Lowell,  James  Russell,  on 
American  calling,  217. 

Luther,  Martin,  15;  saying  of, 
193- 

Mack,  Alexander,  gathers  the 
Bunkers,  19. 

Maine,  Sir  Henry  Sumner,  on 
United  States  Constitu- 
tion, 73. 

Maize  plant,  evolution  of,  31. 

"  Man  on  Horseback,"  the,  198. 

Manhood-suffrage,  objections 
to,  205  ;  no  regression  from 
the  principle  of,  207. 

Marshall,  Daniel,  labors 
among  the  poor  whites  of 
the  South,  34. 

Martineau,  Harriet,  and  Henry 
Clay,  136. 

Massachusetts,  General  Court 
of,  sets  aside  unfair  bar- 
gain with  Indians,  27  ;  fos- 
ters education,  208. 

Massachusetts,  Northmen  on 
the  coast  of,  10;  Shays' 
rebellion  in,  65. 

Mather,  Cotton,  the  first  Amer- 
ican man  of  letters,  41 ; 
P'itz-Greene  Halleckon,  41. 

Maurice,  Frederick,  quoted,  24. 

Mazzini,  Joseph,  preaches  the 
principle  of  Nationality, 
181. 


McCormick,  Cyrus  H.,  invents 
reaping-machine,  89. 

Meade,  Gen.  George  G.,  156. 

Mennonites,  Dutch,  emigrate 
to  America,  18. 

Mexico  attains  to  good  govern- 
ment, 101  ;  acquiesces  in 
the  annexation  of  Texas, 
134;  invaded  and  defeated 
by  United  States  in  the  in- 
terests of  slavery,  134,  135. 

Migrations,  of  people  along  the 
same  parallels,  7  ;  early,  in 
America,  southward  trend 

Of,  12. 

Milan  Decree,  Napoleon's,  in- 
solence of,  1 06. 

Militarism,  dangers  of,  197. 

Missionaries,  Christian,  work 
of,  1 88. 

Missouri  Compromise,the,  136. 

Mob-law,  demoralizing  effect 
of,  163. 

Modern  history  traces  every- 
thing to  secondary  causes, 
I. 

Moltke,  von,  Gen.,  on  the 
American  civil  war,  147. 

Money,  American  talk   about, 

J7S- 

"  Monroe  Doctrine,"  the,  96  ; 
criticised  by  European 
publicists,  1 02  ;  accepted 
without  protest  by  Euro- 
pean powers,  103 ;  pre- 
vents action  of  Holy  Alli- 
ance in  the  New  World, 
131 ;  and  the  Cuban  situa- 
tion, 184 ;  benefit  of,  to 
Spanish  America,  187. 

Monroe,  James,  formulates  the 
"  Monroe  Doctrine,"  96. 

Morse,  Samuel,  inventor  of 
magnetic-electric  tele- 
graph,  88. 

Napoleon  III.  sets  up  an  em- 
pire in  Mexico,  98,  99. 

National  duty,  new  theory  of, 
185. 


232 


INDEX. 


National  life,  4. 

National  perpetuity  and  peace, 
conditions  of,  178. 

Nationality,  the  principle  of, 
preached  by  Mazzini,  181. 

Natural  rights,  responsibility 
of  the  nation  for,  166,  et 
seq, 

New  England  unable  to  feed 
her  population,  30. 

New-Mooners,  sect  of,  19. 

Niebuhr,  Barthold,  tribute  of, 
to  Hamilton,  76. 

North  Temperate  zone  the 
field  of  all  great  develop- 
ments in  human  history,  8. 

Northmen  on  the  coast  of 
Massachusetts,  10. 

Northwest  Territory,  organiza- 
tion of,  137. 

Numerical  system  developed 
by  Asiatic  Americans,  12. 

Osnabruck,  Bishop  of,  64. 

"Palatines"  (Reformed),  the, 
in  America,  18. 

Papacy,  quarrel  of,  with  the 
Eastern  Empire,  14. 

Parting  of  the  ways,  the 
(chap,  xvi.),  183-198. 

Payne,  Edward  John,  on  the 
aboriginal  population  of 
America,  n. 

Penn,  William,  welcomes  num- 
erous sects  to  Pennsylva- 
nia, 19 ;  his  treatment  of 
the  Indians  not  an  isolated 
fact  in  colonial  history,  27. 

Pennsylvania,  legislature  of, 
abolishes  slavery,  6. 

Perils  of  peace  and  prosperity, 
the  (chap,  xv.),  170-182. 

Philadelphia,  patriotic  women, 

of.  S3- 
Phillips,  Wendell,  speaks  for 

the    preservation    of    the 

Union,  146. 
Pietist  Lutherans  in  America, 

18. 


Politics,  the  lower  commercial 
spirit  of,  179. 

Polk,  James  K.,  elected  Presi- 
dent, 134. 

"Poor  Richard,"  Franklin's, 
42. 

Porteous,  Dr.,  Bishop  of  Ches- 
ter, a  native  of  Virginia, 
49. 

Pownall,  Thomas,  letter  of,  to 
Franklin,  62. 

Priestly,  Joseph,  alluded  to, 
107. 

Principles  at  stake  (chap,  i.), 
i-6. 

Prisoners  in  prison-ships,  tor- 
ture of,  by  Gen.  Howe, 
60. 

Property,  rights  of,  116. 

Prophets  of  reform,  the  (chap, 
xi.),  117-129;  Hebrew,  117  ; 
no  nation  can  dispense 
with,  117. 

Protestant  Church,  the,  in  Ire- 
land, 47. 

Protestant,  the  word,  a  potent 
spell  in  colonial  times,  29. 

Protestants,  differences  arise 
among,  15. 

Providence  makes  use  of  sec- 
ondary agencies,  25. 

Puritan   influence  in  Virginia, 

17- 

Puritanism,  a  characteristic 
feature  of  the  American 
mind,  40;  influence  of,  40. 

Puritans,  the,  buy  lands  from 
red  men,  27  ;  cooling  of 
the  religious  atmosphere 
among,  31;  and  Presbyter- 
ians, resist  an  American 
bishopric, 50  ;  English,  be- 
come schoolmasters,  208. 

Quaker  experiment  in  Penn- 
sylvania partially  brought 
to  an  end  by  Scotch-Irish 
from  Ulster,  19,  20,  23. 

Quakers,  German,  protest 
against  man-stealing,  118. 


INDEX. 


233 


Reaping-machine  invented  by 

Cyrus     Me  Cormick,    89, 

et  seq. 
Reconstruction     and     growth 

(chap,  xiv.),  158-169. 
"  Redemptioners,"  119. 
Reed,     Benjamin,     American 

minister  to  England,  95. 
Reformation  of  the  sixteenth 

century,  14. 

Reformed  Church,  the,  16. 
Religious  instruction,   neglect 

of,  in  schools  and  colleges, 

213. 
Religious     interest     a     great 

uniting  force,  30. 
Religious    liberty    felt   to    be 

imperilled,  46. 
Rending   of  bonds,  the  (chap. 

v.),  39-5°- 

Republic,  destiny  of  the,  223. 

Revere,  Paul,  secures  support 
of  Samuel  Adams  in 
adopting  United  States 
Constitution,  75. 

"  Revolution,"  America  never 
had  a,  51. 

Rhode  Island,  property  qual- 
ification in,  202. 

Riel,  Canadian  insurgent,  56. 

Ritter,  Karl,  work  of,  on  Com- 
parative Geography,  7. 

Rochambeau,  Count,  alluded 
to,  60. 

Roman  Catholics  seek  refuge 
in  Maryland,  18. 

Roman  Empire,  area  of,  8. 

Rome  called  to  develop  great 
ideas  of  jural  procedure, 
199. 

Rosecrans,  Gen.  W.  S.,  156. 

Russia,  area  of,  8. 

Salt-famine  throughout  the 
colonies,  54. 

Salzburgers,  the,  21. 

Santa  Anna,  President,  abol- 
ishes local  self-government 
in  Mexico,  133. 

Schwenkf elders,  sect  of,  19. 


Science,  incompetency  of,  2. 

Scotch,  the,  seek  homes  in 
America,  18. 

Scotch-Irish,  arrival  of,  un- 
welcome, 20,22  ;  clergy  set 
up  schools,  208,209. 

Seeker,  Dr.,  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury,  49. 

Secondary  agencies  made  use 
of  by  Providence,  25. 

Secondary  causes,  the  work- 
ings of,  2. 

Separation  of  the  colonies  from 
Great  Britain,  causes  of,  39. 

Separatists  begin  settlement  of 
New  England,  17. 

Settlers,  first,  hardships  of,  25, 
et  seq. 

Seward,  William  H.,  alluded 
to,  150. 

Shays,  Daniel,  rebellion  of,  65. 

Sheffield,  Lord,  publishes  book 
on  American  commerce, 
66. 

Sheridan,  Gen.  Philip  H.,  156. 

Sherman,  Gen.  W.  T.,  early 
views  on  the  length  of  the 
war,  155 ;  warns  the  South, 
164. 

Shipley,  Dr.  Jonathan,  Bishop 
of  St.  Asaph,  on  the 
American  colonies  in  1773, 
200,  219. 

"  Six   Acts,"  the,  of  1819,  107. 

Slavery,  fathers  of  the  repub- 
lic opposed  to,  123;  disap- 
pearing from  Northern 
States,  123,  124;  the  South 
proclaims  the  permanence 
of,  128,  129;  westward 
advance  of,  barred  by  pos- 
ition of  Mexico,  132;  rela- 
tions of,  take  character 
from  Mexican  War,  136. 

Soldiers,  Revolutionary,  dis- 
contented with  Continental 
Congress,  63. 

South  American  countries  in- 
experienced in  self-govern- 
ment, 100. 


234 


INDEX. 


Southern  troops,  bravery  of, 
156. 

Spain,  war  with,  183. 

Spaniards  and  Portuguese 
sought  mineral  wealth  in 
the  New  World,  9. 

Spaniards  never  properly  colo- 
nists, 92 ;  look  upon  Amer- 
ica as  a  source  of  revenue, 

93- 

Spanish  Empire,  remnants  of, 
left  on  our  hands,  184. 

Spanish  misrule  a  bitter  inher- 
itance, 100. 

Spanish -American  colonies  re- 
volt from  Spain,  92. 

State  universities,  erection  of, 
211. 

States,  Confederated,  quarrels 
between,  65. 

Steamboat  constructed  by  Ful- 
ton, 87. 

Stearns,  Shubbael,  gathers 
Baptist  churches  in  the 
South,  34. 

Stephenson,  Robert,  invents 
locomotive,  88. 

"  Stille  im  Lande,"  sect  of,  19. 

Stowe,  Harriet  Beecher,  at- 
tacks "  domestic  slave- 
trade,"  127. 

Strikes,  public  opinion  on,  116. 

Stuart  kingship,  alliance  of 
Anglicanism  with,  16. 

Stuarts,  the  return  of  the,  39. 

Suffrage  confined  to  property- 
holders,  108;  aristocratic  re- 
strictions on,  removed,  113. 

Teaching  profession,  the,  in 
America,  212. 

Temperance,  American,  be- 
comes "teetotal,"  121. 

Temperance  reform,  impor- 
tance of,  119. 

Tennent,  Gilbert,  preaching  of, 
32,  et  seq. 

Teutonic  Christendom  breaks 
away  from  the  Latin 
Church,  14. 


Teutonic  peoples  establish 
principle  of  representation, 
72. 

Texas,  annexation  of,  opposed 
by  anti-slavery  men,  125  ; 
settlement  of,  begun  by 
Americans,  132;  becomes 
independent,  133 ;  annexa- 
tion of,  pressed  by  the 
South,  133. 

Theodore,  King  of  Abyssinia, 
on  missionaries.  188. 

"  Theology  of  inventions,"  91. 

Thersites  the  forerunner  of 
Pericles,  219. 

Thomas,  Gen.  George  H.,  156. 

Tucker,  Rev.  Josiah,  on  future 
of  America,  67. 

Tyndall,  John,  on  the  explana- 
tions of  science,  2. 

Ulster,    Scotch-Irish     settlers 

from,  20. 

"Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,"  127. 
Union,   peril   and   triumph  of 

the    (chap,  xiii.),  142-157; 

dissolution  only  a  question 

of  time,  142. 
University    of     Pennsylvania, 

the,  209. 

Venezuela,  threatened  absorp- 
tion of,  into  Queen's  do- 
minions, 99. 

Virginia,  Puritan  influence  in, 

17- 

Vocation  of  the  Republic,  the 
(chap,  xvii.),  199-223. 

Walpole,  Sir  Robert,  45. 

War,  a,  and  its  penalties  (chap, 
xii.),  130-141. 

Washington,  city  of,  improved 
morals  in,  204,  205. 

Washington,  George,  character 
and  greatness  of,  36 ;  God's 
unique  gift  to  America,  56, 
57 ;  foresight  of,  58  ;  con- 
fidence of  his  soldiers  in, 
58;  General  Order  to  his 


INDEX. 


235 


army  quoted  by  Lincoln, 
58 }  has  poor  opinion  of 
Gen.  Howe,  60 ;  opposed 
to  French  rule  in  Canada, 
61 ;  opposed  to  kingship, 
63 ;  unanimously  elected  to 
the  Presidency,  75;  signs 
Jay's  treaty  with  Great 
Britain,  76;  bids  farewell 
to  public  life,  77 ;  his 
"Farewell  Address,"  77; 
treasurer  of  a  lottery  enter- 
prise, 122;  emancipates 
his  slaves,  123. 

Wealth,  rapidity  of  its  growth, 
172. 

Webster,  Daniel,  opposed  to 
annexation  of  Texas,  134. 

Welsh,  John,  204. 

Wesley,  Charles,  32. 

Wesley,  John,  32. 


"White  Man's  Burden,"  the, 

1 86,  189. 

Whitefield,  George,  32,  etseq. 
Whitman  Walt,  on  art  and  lit- 
erature, 2(7. 
Williams,    Roger,  manifestoes 

of,  39.  4i- 

"  Wilmot  Proviso,"  the,  137. 
Wilson,  Henry,  on  public  life, 

204. 
Wiseman,    Cardinal,    on    art, 

217. 
Wolfe,  Gen.  James,  victory  of, 

42;  mentioned,  60. 
Women,  immigrant,   condition 

of,  improved,  115. 
Woolman,     John,    mentioned, 

42  ;    opponent   of  slavery, 

118. 

Yancey,  William  L.,  143. 


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